where he tethered him amid some trees. Thence he walked up to the house, and looked inside the open shop, pausing with a fixed gaze.
The interior was fitted with shelves, on which was displayed a stock of pottery of a kind for which Surrentum was noted. It was not upon these, however, that the rapt eyes of the soldier rested, but upon the tall, lithe figure of a girl, who was busily engaged in taking the articles down and dusting them. Her back being toward him, he entered the shop with a stealthy step and stood behind her without her knowledge. Pausing, for a moment, to gaze upon the figure and the glossy coils of the luxuriant brown hair of the unconscious girl, he bent down and whispered in her ear the name ‘Neæra!’
She started violently, and the bowl, which she was wiping, fell from her fingers and shivered with a crash on the floor.
‘Oh, sir, is it you?’ she murmured.
Her cheeks flushed, and her eyes fell.
‘Yes, Neæra, it is I – but only for a few niggard moments. I am on my way back to Rome. ’Tis six weeks since I saw you, Neæra – you look pale! have you fared well?’
‘Quite well,’ was the brief, constrained reply.
‘And your father and mother?’
‘Both are well – they are within if you will be pleased to see them.’ She moved as if to go to the interior of the house, but he laid his hand gently on her arm and detained her.
‘In a moment, Neæra – do you wish to be rid of me?’
She gave a hasty, timid glance into the street, and he led her aside into a recess which was less overlooked.
‘You neither look at me nor speak, Neæra – are you displeased to see me? Would you rather have had the weary six weeks prolonged into twelve?’ She raised her head and looked at him with an appealing expression in her beautiful gray eyes, but, in a brief moment, her gaze fell once more. ‘Still you do not say whether I am welcome or not, Neæra?’ he persisted.
‘Spare me from an answer, I pray you,’ she replied, in an almost inaudible tone.
His swarthy cheeks flushed with a yet deeper colour, and he drew himself up. ‘As you will,’ he returned; ‘but if your answer would be “Nay,” say it without hesitation or fear; for I would have the truth from your heart, even at the expense of a little courtesy.’ Her agitation increased, and her fingers worked nervously with the dusting cloth she held. Those fingers, though stained and roughened with toil, were slenderly and delicately formed. He took them in his own, and, in spite of her attempt to withdraw them, kept them in his grasp.
‘What has happened, Neæra?’ said he, looking into her downcast face. ‘Has anything that I have done angered you, or rather, that I have left undone, since I have been chained to duty in yonder island for six weeks? It is long indeed, but we must reflect that had the Prefect no business with Caesar then our meetings would be far seldomer. To Caesar and Prefect I owe the happy chance of seeing you, and on them for a while still depend future opportunities. But what is troubling you, Neæra? You are pale and worn – what has happened?’
‘Nothing but reflection – ah, sir, have pity on me – it was better not to have returned at all.’
‘Ah, is it so? – that is easily mended!’ he replied, in bitter astonishment.
‘Don’t blame – don’t kill me with scornful tones!’ she said, with more courage, even though the courage of despair; ‘think, as I have been thinking through these bitter weeks – oh, so bitter! It is right – it is just that you see me no more. What is there in common between us? I am a poor potter’s girl – am rude in speech and manner; you are nobly born and rich – ’ Her voice trembled with extreme agitation, and she stopped abruptly as if she could trust it no longer. A smile of infinite tenderness and pity illumined his fine features.
‘Had I needed but one thing more to clench my love, you have given it me,’ he said, catching her hands again and drawing her towards him.
‘No – it were better to love one of your own station,’ she panted, trying to repulse him.
‘It is too late to tell me that. Come, look at me, child!’
‘No, I have been foolish and am to blame. I ought to have seen that your way of life cannot be mine. My father has also said it, and he is wise.’
‘Ay, he has said it, but you?’
‘I say it is truth and must be followed.’
‘Foolish! You only bind me the faster to you. Your joint wisdom is vain against my conviction. What! are we to part because a weak, foolish fancy seizes you, that your speech and bearing are not like the artificial, superfine graces of the proud dames who loll away their lives in palaces? Gods forbid! Why, there are those of your sex in Rome – ay, even in Surrentum, who would deem me as the dust beneath their feet.’
‘And there are others, also, whom you would look upon in the same fashion,’ replied the girl.
‘True! and many of them of family and wealth far beyond mine.’
‘Yet what you have of both is far above me, and therefore, between us, all remains the same.’
‘Surrentum cannot better you in a lawyer’s wit, Neæra,’ he said, with a smile, ‘but you spend it in so poor a cause. There remains something far beyond rank and wealth.’
‘Whatever it is, it is not for us in common,’ she said, striving to appear calm; ‘it is over now. I have been weak and foolish, and oh, how I have suffered for it! Forgive me, Centurion, if you can forgive me – go from me and forget me – all our folly.’ As she looked him full in the face there was a depth of anguish in her eyes which filled him alike with pity and joy. At the same time she held out her hand, but he folded his arms across his breast. ‘Centurion!’ he repeated, in a tone of reproof; ‘Neæra, have you forgotten my name?’
His bearing and speech throughout had never shown a sign of hesitation which might have encouraged her in her determination. He stood before her vast, immovable, and calmly resolute. Her glance drooped, and her outstretched hand and arm gradually fell to her side. Then she buried her face in her hands.
He bent closer till his breath played on her hair. ‘Neæra,’ he said, ‘you have been kinder and called me Lucius ere now. Enough of this madness – this folly of saws and maxims! Misdoubting girl, I love you for what you are, and above all on this earth. To thrust me away were to wreck me wholly; and you would not though you possess the power. For I have gathered it from your lips, your eyes, your sweet face, that you have some measure of love for me in return. Is it not so? Speak, Neæra!’
She trembled violently, and, yielding to an irresistible impulse, he threw his arms around her and pressed a fervent kiss upon her cheek.
She freed herself with a desperate exertion, and stood off, panting and shaking in extreme emotion, with her cheeks aflame.
‘Neæra!’ he ejaculated, advancing to her again.
‘No, no! Leave me – go and forget me, if you would be merciful and kind! – oh, you are cruel! Alas, can I ever look in my father’s face again!’
The sound of a footstep in the passage leading to the interior broke upon their ears. She cast one swift look of lofty reproach, mingled with sorrow, upon the young man, and then drooped her head upon her breast.
A short, thick-set man presented himself in the shop. His hands, his coarse garments, and even his face, were stained with the grime of the furnace and the smearings of clay; but through these outward tokens of the common artisan shone the unmistakable signs of superior intellect, in the brilliancy of his eyes, deep set under thick brows, and in a massive forehead, which was very broad and full at the base. His hand, which he raised with a gesture of surprise, as his gaze rested on the young couple, was of the shape usually supposed to be peculiar to the gifted artist and mechanic, being long, square-tipped, and sinewy, with an immense flexibility and power of thumb. Reading the tell-tale faces of the pair with a rapid glance, his countenance instantly assumed a grave sternness, unlike the preoccupied expression which previously rested upon it.
‘What