st have been ruined beyond rescue,--thou, Lygia, and I, perhaps."

"I have enough of Rome, Caesar, feasts, the Augusta, Tigellinus, and
all of you!" burst out Vinicius. "I am stifling. I cannot live thus; I
cannot. Dost understand me?"

"Vinicius, thou art losing sense, judgment, moderation."

"I love only her in this world."

"What of that?"

"This, that I wish no other love. I have no wish for your life, your
feasts, your shamelessness, your crimes!"

"What is taking place in thee? Art thou a Christian?"

The young man seized his head with both hands, and repeated, as if in
despair,--"Not yet! not yet!"

Chapter XXXII

PETRONIUS went home shrugging his shoulders and greatly dissatisfied.
It was evident to him that he and Vinicius had ceased to understand
each other, that their souls had separated entirely. Once Petronius had
immense influence over the young soldier. He had been for him a model
in everything, and frequently a few ironical words of his sufficed to
restrain Vinicius or urge him to something. At present there remained
nothing of that; such was the change that Petronius did not try his
former methods, feeling that his wit and irony would slip without effect
along the new principles which love and contact with the uncomprehended
society of Christians had put in the soul of Vinicius. The veteran
sceptic understood that he had lost the key to that soul. This knowledge
filled him with dissatisfaction and even with fear, which was heightened
by the events of that night. "If on the part of the Augusta it is not a
passing whim but a more enduring desire," thought Petronius, "one of two
things will happen,--either Vinicius will not resist her, and he may be
ruined by any accident, or, what is like him to-day, he will resist, and
in that event he will be ruined certainly, and perhaps I with him, even
because I am his relative, and because the Augusta, having included a
whole family in her hatred, will throw the weight of her influence on
the side of Tigellinus. In this way and that it is bad." Petronius was
a man of courage and felt no dread of death; but since he hoped nothing
from it, he had no wish to invite it. After long meditation, he decided
at last that it would be better and safer to send Vinicius from Rome on
a journey. Ah! but if in addition he could give him Lygia for the road,
he would do so with pleasure. But he hoped that it would not be too
difficult to persuade him to the journey