She had grown old enough to read her own stories, to marry, and to tell stories to a child and to grandchildren, but the time had never come when her heart had not beat quicker at the thought of men sacrificing their life or their children, their will or their well-being to their country’s need.  She had become a widely read woman in both Latin and Greek.  Her reason told her that appreciation of beauty in nature and art, grace and elegance in manners, intellectual freedom and a zest for individual development were essential factors in the progress of civilisation.  She knew that if her husband had not believed in these things he could not have been the poet he was, and she knew his poetry had done something for Roman letters that Virgil’s had not done.  She had not only loved, with all the pure passion of her maturity, his charm and his blitheness and his gifted sensitiveness, but she had been proud of his achievements.  His citizenship had satisfied her.  But always, within the barriers of her own individuality, that faith which is deeper, warmer, more masterly than reason, had kept her the reverent lover of duty, the passionate guardian of character, for whose sake she would deny not only ease and joy, but, even, if the dire need came, beauty itself.  Art the Romans had had to borrow.  Their character they had hewn for themselves, with a chisel unknown to the Greeks, out of the brute mass of their instincts.  Its constancy, its dignity, its magnanimity, probity and fidelity Cicero had described in words befitting their massive splendour.  To possess this character was to be a Roman citizen, in the Forum and on the battlefield, in the study and the studio, in exile and in prison, in life and in death.  Ovid’s citizenship, save for the empty title, had been ended by an imperial decree.  In losing Rome he had ceased to be a Roman.  His voice came back only in cries in which there was no dignity and no fortitude.  He was tiring out his friends.  Perilla no longer let Fidus see his letters.  Even in her own heart the sharpest sorrow was not his exile but his defeat.  Her love had outlived her pride.

The dreaded night was coming on.  Would he moan in his sleep again, without her quieting hand upon his face, or wake from dreams of her to loneliness?  She rose impetuously and looked up through the narrow window.  The sky was filled with the brightness of the April sunset.  Of pain she was no longer afraid.  But she was afraid to go on fighting with nothing to justify the cost of her successive battles or to glorify their result.  Against the sunset sky rose the Capitol.  Burnished gold had been laid upon its austere contours.  Strength was aflame with glory.  She never knew how or why, but suddenly an answering flame leaped within her.  In that majestic temple dwelt the omnipotent gods of her country.  Why should all her prayers be said to the Penates on her hearth?  What did her country need, save, in manifold forms, which obliterated