[84] Cithara.

  [85] Itinerant pipers have existed in Italy from earliest times;
  they still survive, albeit in alien lands and with less tuneful
  instruments.

Agias was full of protestations of delight at beholding his intercessor and ransomer.  Drusus could hardly recognize in the supple-limbed, fair-complexioned, vivacious lad before him, the wretched creature whom Alfidius had driven through the streets.  Agias’s message was short, but quite long enough to make Drusus’s pale cheeks flush with new life, his sunken eyes rekindle, and his languor vanish into energy.  Cornelia would be waiting for him by the great cypress in the gardens of the Lentulan villa, as soon as the moon rose.

Drusus prepared himself hurriedly, and refused all the entreaties of Titus to take him along as a body-guard.  Time coursed on winged feet, as the young man hastened out into the night, and half ran down the familiar pathway.  The day had been only moderately warm for the season, and the night was cool, though not cold.  A soft east wind was blowing down from the distant Apennines, and all the trees were rustling gently.  Up to the giant arm of a gnarled oak, fluttered an owl, which hooted noisily as the young man hurried beneath.  The crickets were chirping.  A little way off was a small stream plunging over a dam; from it came a liquid roar; and the little wall of white spray was just visible in the darkness.  Out from the orchards drifted the fragrant scent of apple, pear, plum, and quince.  Still more sweet was the breeze, as it swept over the wide-stretching rose-beds.  Overhead Orion and Arcturus were glittering in that hazy splendour which belongs to the heavens on a summer’s night.

Drusus kept on, only half noting the beauty of the darkness.  When he entered the groves of the Lentulan villa, almost all light failed him, and but for his intimate knowledge—­from boyhood—­of the whole locality, he could never have kept the path.  Then the moonlight began to stream up in the east, and between the trees and thickets lay the long, yellow bars of brightness, while all else was still in gloom.  Drusus pushed on with confidence, and soon the gurgle of the tiny cataract told him that he was near the old cypress.  A few steps more, and a figure rose from out the fern thicket.  It was Cornelia.  Her hair was tumbling loosely over her shoulders; she wore a soft, light-blue dress that covered her arms and her feet.  In the moonlight her face and hands appeared as bloodless as white marble.

“I knew you would come, Quintus,” she cried.  “I couldn’t say farewell to you, in the presence of my uncle!”

“My beautiful!” cried Drusus; and he caught her in his arms.

The moments that followed were as bitter-sweet as may be conceivable.  Each knew that they had small hope of an honourable realization of their love one for another; that the moment of parting would soon come.  But for the instant they were in Elysium, caught out of mortal care and mortal sorrow, and knowing nothing but the pure delight of the other’s presence.  Then, at last, their talk became less enraptured; the vision of Olympus faded little by little; the stern reality confronted them in all its seriousness.