’He knows better than to fix a maximum, as long as a wealthy fool remains in the city—­though that won’t be much longer, I take it.’

‘Why come you hither, dear my lord?’ urged Basil, with more seriousness.

Regarding him with a grave eye, his friend replied in an undertone: 

‘To spy upon you.’

‘Ha!—­In very truth?’

‘You could wish me a more honourable office,’ Marcian went on, smiling sadly.  ’Yet, if you think of it, in these days, it is some honour to be a traitor to both sides.  There has been talk of you in Rome.  Nay, who knows how or why l They have nothing to do but talk, and these victories of the Goth have set up such a Greek cackle as was never heard since Helen ran away to Troy,—­and, talking of Greek, I bear a letter for you from Heliodora.’

Basil, who had been listening gravely, started at this name and uttered an idle laugh.  From a wallet hanging at his girdle, Marcian drew forth the missive.

‘That may wait,’ said Basil, glancing indifferently at the folded and sealed paper before he hid it away.  ’Having said so much, you must tell me more.  Put off that sardonic mask—­I know very well what hides beneath it—­and look me in the eye.  You have surprised some danger?’

’I heard you spoken of—­by one who seldom opens his lips but to ill purpose.  It was not difficult for me to wade through the shallows of the man’s mind, and for my friend’s sake to win his base confidence.  Needing a spy, and being himself a born traitor, he readily believed me at his beck; in truth he had long marked me, so I found, for a cankered soul who waited but the occasion to advance by infamy.  I held the creature in my hand; I turned him over and over, and he, the while, thinking me his greedy slave.  And so, usurping the place of some other who would have ambushed you in real enmity, I came hither on his errand.’

‘Marcian,’ said the listener, ’I could make a guess at that man’s name.’

’Nay, I doubt if you could, and indeed it matters nothing.  Enough that I may do you some little service.’

‘For which,’ replied Basil, ’I cannot pay you, since all my love is already yours.  And she—­Heliodora,’ he added, with a careless gesture, ‘knows of your mission?’

’Of my mission, no; but of my proposed journey.  Though indeed she may know more than I suppose.  Who shall say what reaches the ear of Heliodora—?’

‘You have not heard perhaps that her husband is dead?’

‘The Prefect dead?’ exclaimed Basil.

’Three weeks ago.—­Rather suddenly—­after supper.  An indigestion, no doubt.’

Marcian spoke with peculiar dryness, averting his eyes from the listener.  Upon Basil’s face came a deep flush; he took out the folded paper again, and held it at arm’s length.

‘You mean—?  You think—?’ he stammered.

‘About women I think not at all,’ said the other, ’as you well know.  There is talk, talk—­what care I?’