There was that adventure of "false Sextus," for instance, who "found Lucrese combing the fleece, under the midnight lamp." He threatened, as I remember, that if she did not submit he would slay her, slay a slave and place him beside her and say he found him there.

A poor device, it always seemed to me.

If Mr.Lucretius had asked him how he came to be in his wife's bedroom overlooking her morals, what could he have said?
But the point is Lucrese submitted, and Alima didn't.
"She kicked me," confided the embittered prisoner--he had to talk to someone.

"I was doubled up with the pain, of course, and she jumped on me and yelled for this old harpy [Moadine couldn't hear him] and they had me trussed up in no time.

I believe Alima could have done it alone," he added with reluctant admiration.