So laughed Cornelia when all their stories were finished, likening their reunion to that of the son of Laertes and the long-faithful Penelope.

“How long were Penelope and Odysseus asunder?” quoth Drusus.

“Twenty years.”

“Vah! We have not been sundered twenty months or one-third as many.  How shall we make the time fly more rapidly?”

“I know not,” said Cornelia, for the first time looking down and sighing, “a lifetime seems very long; but lifetimes will pass.  I shall be an old woman in a few years; and my hair will be all grey, and you won’t love me.”

“Eho,” cried Drusus, “do you think I love you for your hair?”

“I don’t know,” replied Cornelia, shaking her head, “I am afraid so.  What is there in me more than any other woman that you should love; except—­” and here she raised her face half-seriously, half in play—­“I am very beautiful?  Ah! if I were a man, I would have something else to be loved for; I would have eloquence, or strength, or power of command, or wisdom in philosophy.  But no, I can be loved for only two things; an ignoble or a poor man would take me if I were hideous as Atropos, for I am noble, and, if my uncle were an honest guardian, rich.  But you need not regard these at all, so—­” and she brushed her face across Drusus’s cheek, touching it with her hair.

“O Cornelia,” cried the young man, out of the fulness of his heart, “we must not waste this precious time asking why we love each other.  Love each other we do as long as we view the sun.  O carissima! we cannot trust ourselves to look too deeply into the whys and wherefores of things.  We men and women are so ignorant!  We know nothing.  What is all our philosophy—­words!  What is all our state religion—­empty form!  What is all our life—­a dream, mostly evil, that comes out of the eternal unconscious sleep and into that unconscious sleep will return!  And yet not all a dream; for when I feel your hands in mine I know that I am not dreaming—­for dreamers feel nothing so delicious as this!  Not long ago I recalled what old Artabanus said to King Xerxes when the millions of Persia passed in review before their lord at Abydos, ’Short as our time is, death, through the wretchedness of our life, is the most sweet refuge of our race; and God, who gives us tastes that we enjoy of pleasant times, is seen, in His very gift, to be envious.’  And I thought, ‘How wise was the Persian!’ And then I thought, ’No, though to live were to drag one’s days in torture and in woe, if only love come once into life, an eternity of misery is endurable; yes, to be chained forever, as Prometheus, on drearest mountain crag, if only the fire which is stolen be that which kindles soul by soul.’”