d, young and slender and all in white, with a head-dress
of gold in which two poppies flamed upon either temple, and from which
long jewelled ends hung to her knees. A veil fell behind her, over her
dark hair, of Persian gauze, filmy as mist, in which threads of gold
like prisoned sunbeams were woven. Her face, upheld proudly as though
she scorned to give way before the eyes upon her, was white, but her
lips were scarlet as the flowers she wore. A jewelled girdle fell about
her hips, but on her bare arms were neither gems nor gold. The central
figure was speaking, but his words could not be heard. He took the
girl's hand, and laid it in the man's hand, and held them so; and the
tones of the man's voice repeating after him rose to Nicanor's eyrie,
although the words were lost. There followed a pause, in which the girl
drooped her head, but all faces were turned toward her, and Nicanor knew
that her lips were whispering the solemn "Where thou art, Caius, there
am I, Caia"; and he clenched his teeth, and for a moment the scene below
him swam in blood-red mist.

She was lost to him,--always he had known it, known the hopelessness of
his passion, all the sweeter for the bitterness which was in it,--but
never until then had the knowledge so come home to him. He would have
liked to force his way in among them, these smirking, soft patricians,
and tear her away from them by right of his savage strength; in his hot
eyes was murder, and in his heart raging hate and a love as raging. He
could have killed her, even; if she might not be his, he would have her
no man's. His hand shot out as though in fact the knife were in it; in
fancy he saw himself driving it home straight and true above the heart
whose throbbing he had watched--the heart that had throbbed for him
only, the slave, out of all the world of men. He could feel his dagger
bite through her white breast as he had felt the soft slice of flesh
under his blade before; he could see the blood well up around the knife,
slowly at first, with a quick, hot spurt when the steel was withdrawn.
So she would remain all his, and none might take her from him. His
thoughts maddened him. He groaned aloud and dropped his face in his
hands on the stone ledge of the window, and the moonlight touched him, a
strange figure of desperate longings, desperate bewilderment and
rebellion and pain. He shook to the primal passions of love and hate
that tore him,--love for one, hate for all that had gon