Page:The Song of the Sirens.djvu/90

 in her pyre, the day after her wretched death, the day after his heartless desertion of her?"

"No man," spoke Anna steadily, "was ever further from being heartless than Aeneas was and is, no man ever tore himself more unwillingly and reluctantly from the woman he loved."

"There must have been some blundering in the reports that reached me then," Iarbas declared, bewilderedly, "all agreed that from the time he took up his abode in the palace until day before yesterday he lived as her husband and as king of Carthage, that day before yesterday about noon the Trojans began leaving the city by the Cothon gate, that before sunset the fleet was launched and riding at anchor. Two of my messengers told of Dido's begging him to stay, one told of you yourself going out of the Cothon gate to plead with him when the whole fleet was already afloat. All the messengers uniformly reported that Dido's suicide was caused by his desertion."

"Before you left Usinaz," Anna began evenly, "you burnt a hecatomb to Jupiter, did you not?"

"I did," Iarbas agreed.

"The omens were favorable mostly, were they not?" Anna inquired.

"Not mostly," Iarbas replied, "all were favorable and very favorable. Not only none of the bullocks stamped, but not one so much as fidgeted