the foam, and in their minds they saw again the water-birds plashing among lotus plants, and heard the ancient Egyptian litanies softly chanted behind the propylons of a temple built by some king two thousand years departed.  But oftener their eyes ran ahead over the prow, and they walked again across the Forum of the city of their fathers, and drove across the Latin plain-land, and spoke their own dear, sonorous, yet half-polished native tongue.

At last came evening; the sun sank lower and lower; now his broad red disk hung over the crest of the western waves; now it touched them; now it was gone, and only the lines of dying fire streamed behind him—­the last runners in his chariot train.  Up from the cabin below came the voice of the ship’s steward, “Would their excellencies take any refreshment?” But they did not go at once.  They watched the fire grow dimmer and dimmer, the pure light change to red gold, the red gold to crimson, and the crimson sink away.

“Ah, carissima!” cried Drusus, “would that when the orbs of our lives go down to their setting, they might go down like the sunlight, more beautiful in each act of the very dying, as they approach the final goal!”

“Yes, surely,” replied Cornelia, touching her hands upon his head; “but who knows but that Catullus the poet is wrong when he says the sun of life will never rise save once; who knows but that, if our sun set in beauty, it will rise again in grandeur even more?”

“My children,” said Fabia, gently, “the future lies in the knowledge of the gods; but out of the present we must shape our own future.”

“No, delectissima,” replied her nephew, “to do that we are all too weak; except it be true, as Aratus the poet has said, ’that we men are also the offspring of gods,’ in which case Heaven itself must stoop to give us aid.”

But Cornelia’s eyes had wandered down into the foam, still gleaming as snow in the failing light.

“Ah!” she said, “the ages are long; if there be gods, their days are our lifetimes, and we but see a little and know not what to think.  But to live a noble life will always be the fairest thing, whether death be an unending sleep or the threshold to Pindar’s Elysium.”

And what more of grave wisdom might have dropped from her lips none may relate, for her husband had shaken off the spell, and laughed aloud in the joy of his strong life and buoyant hopes.  Then they all three laughed, and thought no more of sober things.  They went down into the cabin just as the last bars of light flickered out in the west, and only the starlight broke the darkness that spread out over the face of the sea.

II