When could it be that he had come to an understanding with the inexperienced and easily wooed maiden? How ready she must have been to clasp the hand held out to her by this man! Nothing surprised her in Irene, the child of the present; she could comprehend too that Irene’s charm might quickly win the heart even of a grave and serious man.
And yet--in all the processions it was never Irene that he had gazed at, but always herself, and how came it to pass that he had given a prompt and ready assent to the false invitation to go out to meet her in the desert at midnight? Perhaps she was still nearer to his heart than Irene, and if gratitude drew him to her with fresh force then--aye then--he might perhaps woo her, and forget his pride and her lowly position, and ask her to be his wife.
She thought this out fully, but before she had reached the half circle enclosed by the Philosophers’ busts the question occurred to her mind. And Irene?
Had she gone with him and quitted her without bidding her farewell because the young heart was possessed with a passionate love for Publius--who was indeed the most lovable of men? And he? Would he indeed, out of gratitude for what she hoped to do for him, make up his mind, if she demanded it, to make her Irene his wife--the poor but more than lovely daughter of a noble house?
And if this were possible, if these two could be happy in love and honor, should she Klea come between the couple to divide them? Should she jealously snatch Irene from his arms and carry her back to the gloomy temple which now--after she had fluttered awhile in sportive freedom in the sunny air--would certainly seem to her doubly sinister and unendurable? Should she be the one to plunge Irene into misery--Irene, her child, the treasure confided to her care, whom she had sworn to cherish?
“No, and again no,” she said resolutely. “She was born for happiness, and I for endurance, and if I dare beseech thee to grant me one thing more, O thou infinite Divinity! it is that Thou wouldst cut out from my soul this love which is eating into my heart as though it were rotten wood, and keep me far from envy and jealousy when I see her happy in his arms. It is hard--very hard to drive one’s own heart out into the desert in order that spring may blossom in that of another: but it is well so--and my mother would commend me and my father would say I had acted after his own heart, and in obedience to the teaching of the great men on these pedestals. Be still, be still my aching heart--there--that is right!”