rself loose by a quick movement, Marcia turned and faced
him with all the blood of the Torquati flushing in her cheeks, all
their fire blazing in her eyes.

"Dog of a pulse-eater!" she cried, and he shrank back before the
vehemence of her tone. "Do I care what you do? Break your alliance
with these people if you wish--an alliance of fools with fools, knaves
with knaves! Break it, before it be cloven asunder for you by the
sword of Rome. Doubtless your chief will sacrifice all his plans to
your cowardly lust. Kill my protector, tear down his house, and--kill
me!--me, for whom there is neither sowing nor reaping in this matter."

All his arrogance and violence had vanished, cowed and crushed by her
outbreak; but, even as he cringed before her, the gleam of Oriental
cunning had taken its place.

"Ah! now, indeed, art thou more beautiful than the lady Tanis," he
muttered, clasping and unclasping his hands, as if in ecstasy. "Now,
indeed, do I love thee." His voice sank to a whisper, and he glanced
about timorously. "And so it is neither sowing nor reaping with you,
my pretty?" he went on. "Fools we may be, but not the fools to be
blind to your sowing--not the fools who shall not root up your seed
before the day of reaping. Did not you, a Roman, counsel Mago to
delay? Did you not, foolish one, even give such counsel at the banquet
of welcome to the schalischim, until I laughed in my cup to see a silly
girl who would cajole men of government and of war?"

Marcia stood, rigid and pale. All her plans seemed shivering about
her. She was doomed to fail then--fail after all, through the cunning
of these vermin. Still she struggled to retain her composure.

"Liar!" she said. "Do I not know that if you spoke truth I would
already be buried under hurdles weighted with stones?"

He laughed softly. "Why?" he asked. "What can you avail, coining lead
for us who perceive its falseness? Nay, you are even of use to
Hannibal, for, by your very eagerness, he has come to Maharbal's
thinking, that all must be done speedily, if we would take Rome. Even
now Capuans work night and day building our engines. Soon they will
set them up before your gates. We shall winter in Rome, as the guests
of the lady Marcia who has invited us. Therefore Hannibal grants you
life and to be a comfort to his friend and father, Pacuvius Calavius,
in his declining years;" and he laughed again, but harshly and
sneeringly.

Marcia could scar