He knew then, for the first time, how he loved her.

As his whole life flashes through the memory of a drowning man, so Lygia began to pass through his.

He saw her, heard every word of hers,--saw her at the fountain, saw her at the house of Aulus, and at the feast; felt her near him, felt the odor of her hair, the warmth of her body, the delight of the kisses which at the feast he had pressed on her innocent lips.

She seemed to him a hundred times sweeter, more beautiful, more desired than ever,--a hundred times more the only one, the one chosen from among all mortals and divinities.

And when he thought that all this which had become so fixed in his heart, which had become his blood and life, might be possessed by Nero, a pain seized him, which was purely physical, and so piercing that he wanted to beat his head against the wall of the atrium, until he should break it.