tood, seeing and hearing, and her low moaning changed to that
laughter which anguish borrows from gladness when it has exhausted all
forms of expression. At last she sank on her knees on the floor, and
while she shed tears of pain still laughed shrilly, till she understood
with sudden horror what was happening. She started violently; a sob
convulsed her bosom; she wept and wept, and these tears did her good.

When, at one in the afternoon, the sun fell full on her window, she had
not yet found strength to move. A flood of bright light, in which whirled
millions of motes, danced before her eyes; and as her breath sent the
atoms flying, it passed through her mind that at this very moment the
reprobate utterance of a madman's lips was blowing happiness, joy, peace,
and hope out of the lives of many thousands--blowing them into
nothingness, like the blast of a storm.

Then she commanded herself, for the horrible scene before her threatened
to stamp itself on her eye like the image her father could engrave on an
onyx; and she must avoid that, or give up all hope of ever being
light-hearted again. Hardly an hour since she had seen the arena looking
like a basket of fresh flowers, full of splendid, youthful men. Then the
warriors of the Macedonian phalanx had taken their places on the long
ranks of seats on which she looked down, with several cohorts of archers,
brown Numidians and black Ethiopians, like inquisitive spectators of the
expected show--but all in full armor. At first the youths and men had
formed in companies, with singing, talk, and laughter, and here and there
a satirical chant; but presently there had been squabbles with the
town-watch, and while the younger and more careless still were gay
enough, whole companies on the other hand had looked up indignantly at
the Romans; some had anxiously questioned each other's eyes, or stared
down in sullen dismay at the sand.

The hot, seething blood of these men--the sons of a free city, and
accustomed to a life of rapid action in hard work and frenzied
enjoyment--took the delay very much amiss; and when it was rumored that
the doors were being locked, impatience and distrust found emphatic
utterance. Timid whistling and other expressions of disapproval had been
followed by louder demonstrations, for to be locked up was intolerable.
But the lictors and guards took no notice, after removing the member of
the Museum who had perpetrated the epigram on Caesar's mother. This