Presently an official strolled in from another department.  He was a middle-aged, corpulent, and cheerful-looking man, dressed in gaudy coloured tissue, on which all manner of strange birds were depicted.  He was bursting with news.

“Phocas is going to win,” he said.  “It is certain.”

Cephalus looked vaguely up from his book and said:  “Oh!”

Theophilus and Rufinus paid no attention to the remark.

“Well,” continued the new-comer cheerfully, “Who will come to the races with me?”

As soon as he heard the word races, Rufinus looked up from his scribbling.  “I will come,” he said, “if I can get leave.”

“I did not know you cared for that sort of thing,” said Cephalus.

Rufinus blushed and murmured something about going every now and then.  He walked out of the room, and sought the Referendarius in the next room.  This official was reading a document.  He did not look up when Rufinus entered, but went on with his reading.  At last, after a prolonged interval, he turned round and said:  “What is it?”

“May I go to the races?” asked Rufinus.

“Well,” said the high official, “what about your work?”

“We’ve finished everything,” said the clerk.

The Head of the Department assumed an air of mystery and coughed.

“I don’t think I can very well see my way to letting you go,” he said.  “I am very sorry,” he added quickly, “and if it depended on me you should go at once.  But He,” he added—­he always alluded to the Head of the Office as He—­“does not like it.  He may come in at any moment and find you gone.  No; I’m afraid I can’t let you go to-day.  Now, if it had been yesterday you could have gone.”

“I should only be away an hour,” said Rufinus, tentatively.

“He might choose just that hour to come round.  If it depended only on me you should go at once,” and he laughed and slapped Rufinus on the back, jocularly.

The clerk did not press the point further.

“You’d better get on with that index,” said the high official as Rufinus withdrew.

He told the result of his interview to his sporting friend, who started out by himself to the Hippodrome.

Rufinus settled down to his index.  But he soon fell into a mood of abstraction.  The races and the games did not interest him in the least.  It was something else which attracted him.  And, as he sat musing, the vision of the Hippodrome as he had last seen it rose clearly before him.  He saw the seaweed-coloured marble; the glistening porticoes, adorned with the masterpieces of Greece, crowded with women in gemmed embroideries and men in white tunics hemmed with broad purple; he saw the Generals with their barbaric officers—­Bulgarians, Persians, Arabs, Slavs—­the long line of savage-looking prisoners in their chains, and the golden breastplates of the standard-bearers.  He saw the immense silk velum floating in the azure air over that rippling sea of men, those hundreds of thousands who swarmed on the marble steps of the Hippodrome.  He saw the Emperor in his high-pillared box, on his circular throne of dull gold, surrounded by slaves fanning him with jewel-coloured plumes, and fenced round with golden swords.