Amara twists her hands, still uncertain what to say. They have never had a conversation like this. Often when she sees Felix, he doesn’t talk at all. Except, of course, to tell her afterward how bad her performance was, how he cannot imagine why any man would pay money for that. Even though she hates him, his contempt is still wounding. It hurts, the way he touches her as if she were nothing. And now he’s gazing into her eyes as if he’s interested in what she has to say, as if what she thinks is important. All her instincts tell her it’s a ruse, but she’s desperate for it to be true. Perhaps she can reach him.

“Why did you buy me?” she asks. “I was sold as a concubine. I’m educated, play the lyre. I know that cost you more. If you didn’t want all those skills for yourself, then why? What sort of investment am I if I grind out the rest of my days in the cells downstairs?” Amara thinks of Gallus, of the self-assured way he stands when he’s getting customers to pay up at the door. She tries to hold herself a little taller. “I could make you a lot more money than that, if you let me.”

For an unbearable period of time, Felix says nothing. Amara waits, the fear she has tried to squash mushrooming in the silence. “Why did I buy you?” He rests his elbows on the table, cupping his chin in his hands. It’s a gesture of familiarity, almost as if they were equals. “It wasn’t for your marvelous tits; let’s be honest, we’ve both seen better. And I wasn’t dazzled by your beauty.” He pauses, letting his words sink in as he looks her up and down. “You weren’t much prettier than all the other girls standing naked in a row. You’re no Dido.” Felix stares into her eyes. “But I couldn’t look anywhere else from the moment I saw you. There you were, being auctioned off as a common whore, but you could have been the goddess Diana, from the way you held yourself. As if at any moment, you would call on your hunting dogs to tear apart every man who had dared to see you naked.”