“You behave after the fashion of your race,” said the other bowing low.  “They have kept even kings waiting in their ante-chambers.”

“But you do not wear a crown,” said Publius evasively.  “And if any one should know how to wait it is an old courtier, who—­”

“When it is at the command of his sovereign,” interrupted Eulaeus, the old courtier may submit, even when youngsters choose to treat him with contempt.”

“That hits us both,” said Publius, turning to Lysias.  “Now you may answer him, I have heard and said enough.”

CHAPTER III.

Irene’s foot was not more susceptible to the chafing of a strap than her spirit to a rough or an unkind word; the Roman’s words and manner had hurt her feelings.

She went towards home with a drooping head and almost crying, but before she had reached it her eyes fell on the peaches and the roast bird she was carrying.  Her thoughts flew to her sister and how much the famishing girl would relish so savory a meal; she smiled again, her eyes shone with pleasure, and she went on her way with a quickened step.  It never once occurred to her that Klea would ask for the violets, or that the young Roman could be anything more to her sister than any other stranger.

She had never had any other companion than Klea, and after work, when other girls commonly discussed their longings and their agitations and the pleasures and the torments of love, these two used to get home so utterly wearied that they wanted nothing but peace and sleep.  If they had sometimes an hour for idle chat Klea ever and again would tell some story of their old home, and Irene, who even within the solemn walls of the temple of Serapis sought and found many innocent pleasures, would listen to her willingly, and interrupt her with questions and with anecdotes of small events or details which she fancied she remembered of her early childhood, but which in fact she had first learnt from her sister, though the force of a lively imagination had made them seem a part and parcel of her own experience.

Klea had not observed Irene’s long absence since, as we know, shortly after her sister had set out, overpowered by hunger and fatigue she had fallen asleep.  Before her nodding head had finally sunk and her drooping eyelids had closed, her lips now and then puckered and twitched as if with grief; then her features grew tranquil, her lips parted softly and a smile gently lighted up her blushing cheeks, as the breath of spring softly thaws a frozen blossom.  This sleeper was certainly not born for loneliness and privation, but to enjoy and to keep love and happiness.