her admiration, besides the awe and love she already felt.

During the night, at his waking, and in his bath, he had felt that she
was as necessary to him as the breath of life and hope. What he
experienced was love as the poets had sung it. How often had he laughed
it to scorn, and boasted that he was armed against the arrows of Eros!
Now, for the first time, he was aware of the anxious rapture, the ardent
longing of which he had read in so many songs. There stood the object of
his passion. She must hear him, must be his--not by compulsion, not by
imperial command, but of the free impulse of her heart.

His confession would help to this end.

With a swift gesture, as if to throw off the last trace of fatigue,
he sat up and began in a firm voice, with a light in his eyes:

"Yes, I killed my brother Geta. You shudder. And yet, if at this day,
when I know all the results of the deed, the state of affairs were the
same as then, I would do it again! That shocks you. But only listen,
and then you will say with me that it was Fate which compelled me to act
so, and not otherwise."

He paused, and then mistaking the anxiety which was visible in Melissa's
face for sympathetic attention, he began his story, confident of her
interest:

"When I was born, my father had not yet assumed the purple, but he
already aimed at the sovereignty. Augury had promised it to him; my
mother knew this, and shared his ambition. While I was still at my
nurse's breast he was made consul; four years later he seized the throne.