"What do I want?" He was amazed that she should ask, exasperated.
Had the conventual confinement turned her head? "I want your
testimony. I want you to denounce this fellow for the impostor
that he is. The people will believe you."

"You think they will?" Interest had kindled in her glance.

"What else? Are you not the mother of Demetrius, and shall not a
mother know her own son?"

"You forget. He was ten years of age then--a child. Now he is a
grown man of three-and-twenty. How can I be sure? How can I be
sure of anything?"

He swore a full round oath at her. "Because you saw him dead."

"Yet I may have been mistaken. I thought I knew the agents of
yours who killed him. Yet you made me swear--as the price of my
brothers' lives--that I was mistaken. Perhaps I was more mistaken
than we thought. Perhaps my little Demetrius was not slain at
all. Perhaps this man's tale is true."

"Perhaps . . ." He broke off to stare at her, mistrustfully,
searchingly. "What do you mean?" he asked her sharply.

Again that wan smile crossed the hard, sharp-featured face that
once had been so lovely. "I mean that if the devil came out of
hell and called himself my son, I should acknowledge him to your
undoing."