Slowly and unwillingly he withdrew his gaze from the pale yet lovely countenance on which it had been fixed, and looked up.
At the open door, pale, silent, motionless, stood the master of the house.
Incapable, from the confusion of his ideas, of any other feeling than the animal instinct of self-defence, Vetranio no sooner beheld Numerian's figure than he rose, and drawing a small dagger from his bosom, attempted to advance on the intruder.

He found himself, however, restrained by Antonina, who had fallen on her knees before him, and grasped his robe with a strength which seemed utterly incompatible with the slenderness of her form and the feebleness of her sex and age.
The first voice that broke the silence which ensued was Numerian's.

He advanced, his face ghastly with anguish, his lip quivering with suppressed emotions, to the senator's side, and addressed him thus:-- 'Put up your weapon; I come but to ask a favour at your hands.' Vetranio mechanically obeyed him.

There was something in the stern calmness, frightful at such a moment, of the Christian's manner that awed him in spite of himself.
'The favour I would petition for,' continued Numerian, in low, steady, bitter tones, 'is that you would remove your harlot there, to your own abode.

Here are no singing-boys, no banqueting-halls, no perfumed couches.