Deep compassion filled her heart, and yet she felt she dare not sanction
what she had heard and deplored. Torn by deep and conflicting feelings
she threw back her head, brushed her hair off her face, and cried: "Let
me go now; I can bear it no longer!"

"So soft-hearted?" asked he, and shook his head disapprovingly. "Life
rages more wildly round the throne than in an artist's home. You will
have to learn to swim through the roaring torrent with me. Believe me,
even enormities can become quite commonplace. And, besides, why does it
still shock you when you yourself know that it was indispensable?"

"I am only a weak girl, and I feel as if I had witnessed these fearful
deeds, and had to bear the terrible blood-guiltiness with you!" broke
from her lips.

"That is what you must and shall do! It is to that end that I have
confided to you what no one else has ever heard from my mouth!" cried
Caracalla, his eyes flashing more brightly. She felt as though this cry
called her from her slumbers and revealed the precipice to which she had
strayed in her sleepwalking.

When Caracalla had begun telling her of his youth, she had only listened
with half an ear; for she could not forget Berenike's rescuing ship. But
soon his confessions completely attracted her attention, and the lament
of this powerful man on whom so many injuries and wrongs had fallen, who
even in childhood had been deprived of the happiness of a mother's love,
had touched her tender heart. That which was afterward told to her she
had identified with her own humble life; she heard with a shudder that it
was to the malice of his brother that this unhappy being owed the injury