d on mere curiosity. Holding one hand
to her wildly beating heart, she looked across the bloodstained arena
to the rows of seats and the dais decorated for Caesar. There stood
Caracalla, with the Egyptian at his side, pointing down at the arena
with his finger. And what was to be seen on the spot he indicated was
so horrible that she again shut her eyes, and this time she even covered
them with her hands. But she would and must see, and once more she
looked across; and the man whose assurances she had once believed, that
it was only his care for the throne and state and the compulsion of
cruel fate which had ever made him shed blood--that man was standing
side by side with the vile, ruthless spy whose tall figure towered far
above his master's. His hand lay on the villain's arm, his eye rested on
the corpse-strewn arena beneath; and now he raised his head, he turned
his face, whose look of suffering had once moved her soul, toward
her--and he laughed--she could see every feature--laughed so loud,
so heartily, so gleefully, as she had never before seen him laugh. He
laughed till his whole body and shoulders shook. Now he took his hand
from the Egyptian's arm and pointed to the dead lying at his feet.

As she saw that laugh, of which she could not hear a sound, Melissa
felt as though a hyena had yelled in her ear, and, yielding to an
irresistible impulse, she looked down once more at the destruction of
youthful life and happiness which had been wrought in one short hour--at
the stream of blood after which so many bitter tears must flow. The
sight indeed cut her to the heart, and yet she was thankful for it; for
the first time the reckless cruelty of that laughing monster was evident
in all its naked atrocity. Horror, aversion, loathing for that man to
whom everything but power, cruelty, and cunning, was as nothing, left
no room for fear or pity, or even the least shade of self-reproach for
having aroused in him a desire which she could not gratify.

She clenched her little fists, and, without vouchsafing another glance
at the detestable butcher who had dared to cast his eyes on her, she
withdrew from the window and cried out aloud, though startled at the
sound of her own voice: "The time, the time! It is fulfilled for him
this day!"

And how her eyes flashed and her bosom heaved and fell! With what a
firm step did she pace the long suite of rooms, while the conviction was
borne in on her that this deed of the vile assas