Fabia never knew accurately what happened before the sun rose a second time after this night.  Afterwards she recognised the linked hours as the bridge upon which she passed, without return, from joy to pain, from youth to age, from ignorance to knowledge.  But the manner of the crossing never became clear in her memory.  Details stood out mercilessly.  Their relationship, their significance were at the time as phantasmagoric as if she had been lost in the torturing unrealities of a nightmare.  Just after her uncle left she was called to the room of Perilla’s youngest child who had awakened with a sore throat and fever.  Against the protests of the nurse, she sat up with him herself because through the shadows that darkened her mind she groped after some service to her husband.  When she was an old woman she could have told what was carved on the cover of the little box from which she gave the medicine every hour until the fever broke, and the colour of the nurse’s dress as she hurried in at dawn.  Practical matters claimed her attention after she had bathed and dressed.  The doctor was sent for to confirm her own belief that the child had nothing more than a cold.  The older boy’s tutor consulted her about a change in the hours of exercise.  A Greek artist came to talk over new decorations for the walls of the dining room.

The forenoon passed.  The cold wind, which had been blowing all night, an early herald of winter, died down.  A portentous silence seemed to isolate her from the rest of the city.  At noon Ovid came home.  She felt no surprise.  They clung to each other in silence and when he did speak he seemed to be saying what she had known already.  The words made little impression.  She only thought how white he was, and how old, as old as she was herself.  His voice seemed to reach her ears from a great distance.  He was to go away from her to the world’s end, to a place called Tomi on the terrible Black Sea.  The formal decree had stated as the cause the immorality of his Art of Love—­yes, the volume had been published ten years ago and he had enjoyed the imperial favour as much since then as before.  The real reason, so the confidential messenger had explained to him, was something quite different.  It was not safe to tell her.  Her ignorance was better for them both.  He had made a terrible blunder, the Emperor called it a crime, but he was innocent of evil intent.  No, there was no use in making any plea.  He had talked the matter over with Maximus, although he had not told him what the “crime” was.  Maximus had been sure that nothing could be done, that denial would lead only to a public trial, the verdict of which would be still more disastrous.  The Emperor was clement, his anger might cool, patience for a year or two might bring a remission of the sentence.  The only hope lay in obedience.  Maximus had not been allowed to return with him in the hurried journey by government post.  The officers had held out little hope to him.  A change had come over Caesar.