ir was bound
back with a white fillet, but in the midst of its mass shone a single
golden crescent studded with little gems. She came with shy steps and
downcast eyes--abashed before so many strangers; and, as she came, all
gazed at her in admiration, not as upon the bright beauty of a rose,
but the perfect sweetness of a modest lily. Cornelia led her on, until
they stood before the prisoner.

"Artemisia," said Cornelia, in a low voice, "have you ever seen this
man before?"

Artemisia raised her eyes, and, as they lit on Pratinas, there was in
them a gleam of wonder, then of fear, and she shrank back in dread, so
that Cornelia threw her arm about her to comfort her.

"_A! A!_" and the girl began to cry. "Has he found me? Will he take
me? Pity! mercy! Pratinas!"

But no one had paid her any more attention. It was Caesar who had
sprung from his seat.

"Wretch!" and his terrible eyes burned into Pratinas's guilty breast,
so that he writhed, and held down his head, and began to mutter words
inaudible. "Can you tell the truth to save yourself the most horrible
tortures human wit can devise?"

But Pratinas had nothing to say.

Again Demetrius leaped upon him. The pirate was a frantic animal. His
fingers moved as though they were claws to pluck the truth from the
offender's heart. He hissed his question between teeth that ground
together in frenzy.

"How did you get her? Where from? When?"

Pratinas choked for utterance.

"Artemisia! Daphne! Yours! I lost her! Ran away at Rome!"

The words shook out of him like water from a well-filled flask.
Demetrius relaxed his hold. A whole flood of conflicting emotions was
displayed upon his manly face. He turned to Artemisia.

"_Makaira!_ dearest! don't you know me?" he cried, holding
outstretched his mighty arms.

"I am afraid!" sobbed poor Artemisia in dismay.

"Come!" It was Cornelia who spoke; and, with the daughter crying
softly on one arm, and the father dragged along in a confused state of
ecstasy on the other, she led them both out of the room.

Pratinas was on his knees before Caesar. The Hellene was again
eloquent--eloquent as never before. In the hour of extremity his
sophistry and his rhetoric did not leave him. His antitheses,
epigrams, well-rounded maxims, figures of speech, never were at a
better command. For a time, charmed by the flow of his own language,
he gathered strength and confidence, and launched out into bolder
flights of subtly wrought rhet