‘Help me?’ exclaimed Basil, in scornful impatience.  ’Am I such a fool as to think you would wish to help me, even if you could?’

‘Listen to me, Basil.’  She spoke in a deep note which was half friendliness, half menace.  ’I am not wont to have my requests refused.  Leave me thus, and you have one more enemy—­an enemy more to be dreaded than all the rest.  Already I know something of this story, and I can know the whole of it as soon as I will; but what I want now is to hear the truth about your part in it.  You have lost your little Goth; of that I need no assurance.  But tell me how it came about.’

Basil stood with bent head.  In the portico, at a little distance, there began to sound the notes of a flute played by some itinerant musician.

‘You dare refuse me?’ said Heliodora, after waiting a moment.  ’You are a bolder man than I thought.’

‘Ask what you wish to know,’ broke from the other.  ’Recount to you I will not.  Put questions, and I will reply if I think fit.’

‘Good.’

Heliodora smiled, with a movement which made all her trappings of precious metal jingle as though triumphantly.  And she began to question, tracking out all Basil’s relations with Veranilda from their first meeting at Cumae to the day of the maiden’s disappearance.  His answers, forced from him partly by vague fear, partly by as vague a hope, were the briefest possible, but in every case he told the truth.

‘It is well,’ said Heliodora, when the interrogation was over.  ’Poor, poor Basilidion!  How ill he has been used!  And not even a kiss from the little Goth.  Or am I mistaken?  Perhaps—­’

‘Be silent!’ exclaimed Basil harshly.

’Oh, I will not pry into chaste secrets.  For the present, enough.  Go your ways, Basil, and take courage.  I keep faith, as you know; and that I am disposed to be your friend is not your standing here, alive and well, a sufficient proof?’

She had risen, and, as she uttered these words, her eyes gleamed large in the dusk.

‘When you wish to see me,’ she added, ’come to my house.  To you it is always open.  I may perchance send you a message.  If so, pay heed to it.’

Basil was turning away.

’What!  Not even the formal courtesy?  Your manners have indeed declined, my poor Basil.’

With an abrupt, awkward movement, he took her half offered hand, and touched the rings with his lips; then hastened away.

On the edge of the cluster of idlers who were listening to the flute player stood his needy kinsman.  Basil spoke with him for a moment, postponed their business, and, with a sign to the two slaves in attendance, walked on.  By the Clivus Argentarius he descended to the Forum.  In front of the Curia stood the state’ carriage of the City Prefect, for the Senate had been called together this morning to hear read some decree newly arrived from Byzantium; and as Basil drew near he saw the Prefect, with senators