Page:The Song of the Sirens.djvu/236

 ineffaceable distinction making his armor seem more golden, his cloak more crimson than any of those behind him, as his face seemed nobler and his eyes brighter. Mucia admired him unreservedly and her sense of pique at his coolness lessened. She comprehended why Sulla had accorded him his title of "the Great Man;" if at that moment his shoulders bore the whole weight of Rome's destinies he looked fully equal to the load, looked the visible incarnation of the majesty of Rome. Beside him Clodius seemed a poor creature.

Yet Mucia ruefully reflected that appearances were very little likely to avail in the approaching crisis. Clodius looked the shrewder, if the meaner man.

Before Antony went his way to take his place among the younger members of the staff he left Mucia next Pompeia. Looking about she found Caesar on her left between her and Clodius. Clodius did not meet her eye. Crassus behind him looked pasty and mottled.

Caesar had hitched his belt askew into that rakish position, the habit of which had made him so conspicuous as a lad. He seemed to Mucia masking a cynical bravado under an inscrutable air of rollicking jauntiness. Pompeia gloomed darkly, tense and over-wrought.

The centurions had flowed round in a crescent