ito's name was taken up and tossed from hall to hall; she heard it
now near, now far, in the midst of the rush of hasty footsteps and the
tangle of voices. A scream pierced through the clamor and hung a moment
above all other sounds; someone was wounded. She had a vision of
Claudius the physician brushing by her half-open door. As from a mist of
terror she saw the flying of his skirt and the gleam of his silver
beard. The actual point of attack was too far away for her to know what
went on. She began to draw her breath in small gasping sobs, glancing
this way and that, as one who longs to flee and dares not.

A sound in the garden caught her ears; from where she stood she strained
her eyes to see. Only the armed man on guard behind the little narrow
door, vine-hung, which led to the outer world. The man, though she could
not see him for the darkness, was short and fat, and his little pig's
eyes were glazed with fear. But there came other sounds; and a black
figure heaved itself above the wall, on the outer side, against the
starlight, and tottered insecurely there. And then that armed man
squealed, and cast his weapon on the ground, and knelt; and this also
she could not see. Nor could she hear the words which the black figure
on the wall flung down, nor what was answered, abjectly, with prayers
and promises. She did not see the dark bulk slide scrambling down the
wall, landing cat-like on its feet; she did not see it struggle a moment
with the kneeling man who tried to rise and flee, and thrust him forward
on his face. Again new sounds reached her out of all the uproar on the
other side of the house; the grating of a key, the thud of feet upon the
sward. Black figures came headlong out of the night; there was a clash
of spurs on the marble steps; and one man, and another, and a third,
leaped into the lighted room.

First of them all was a short man, bowed in the legs, with a red scrub
of beard and yellow eyes which gleamed at her. And those behind him were
great and blond and bearded, with drawn daggers, and round shields of
bull's hide on their left arms. They crowded on the heels of the
foremost, and stopped short, staring in the brilliant light at the
palpitating figure of rose.

Until then Varia had shrunk and wept and trembled, a terrified child,
alone, with no hand to cling to. But as the first barbarian crossed her
threshold, she faced him, a desperate, tender thing at bay. Unknown,
unreckoned with, there lurk