I knew the cost of what I would do for Drusus's sake; and, though the vilest slave gibber and point at me, I would hold my head as proudly as did ever a Cornelian or Claudian maiden; for I have done that which my own heart tells me was right; and more than that or less than that, can no true woman do!" Ahenobarbus felt the room spinning round him.

He saw himself ruined in everything that he had held dear.

He would be the laughing-stock of Rome; he, the hero of a score of amorous escapades, the darling of as many patrician maidens, jilted by the one woman to whom he had become the abject slave.

Courage came from despair.
"Be silent!" he gasped, his face black with fury.

"If every word you say were true, yet with all the more reason would I drag you in my marriage procession, and force you to avow yourself my wife.