Balbilla reddened and said angrily: 

“Really Verus, in good earnest, I will not allow you to speak to me in that way, so now you know it once for all; I have so little liking for what is not clean that I find it quite easy to avoid it without assistance.”

“You are too severe,” interrupted the Empress with a hideous smile.  “Do not you think Domitia Lucilla, that she ought to allow your husband to be of service to her?”

“If the Empress thinks it right and fitting,” replied the lady raising her shoulders, and with an expressive movement of her hands.  Sabina quite took her meaning, and suppressing another yawn she said angrily: 

“In these days we must be indulgent toward a husband who has chosen Ovid’s amatory poems as his faithful companion.  What is the matter Titianus?”

While Balbilla had been relating her meeting with the sculptor Pollux, a chamberlain had brought in to the prefect an important letter, admitting of no delay.  The state official had withdrawn to the farther side of the room with it, had broken the strong seal and had just finished reading it, when the Empress asked her question.

Nothing of what went on around her escaped Sabina’s little eyes, and she had observed that while the governor was considering the document addressed to him he had moved uneasily.  It must contain something of importance.

“An urgent letter,” replied Titianus, “calls me home.  I must take my leave, and I hope ere long to be able to communicate to you something agreeable.”

“What does that letter contain?”

“Important news from the provinces,” said Titianus.

“May I inquire what?”

“I grieve to say that I must answer in the negative.  The Emperor expressly desired that this matter should be kept secret.  Its settlement demands the promptest haste, and I am therefore unfortunately obliged to quit you immediately.”

Sabina returned the prefect’s parting salutations with icy coldness and immediately desired to be conducted to her private rooms to dress herself for supper.

Balbilla escorted her, and Florus betook himself to the “Olympian table,” the famous eating-house kept by Lycortas, of whom he had been told wonders by the epicures at Rome.

When Verus was alone with his wife he went up in a friendly manner and said: 

“May I drive you home again?”

Domitia Lucilla had thrown herself on a couch, and covered her face with her hands, and she made no reply.  “May I?” repeated the praetor.  As his wife persisted in her silence, he went nearer to her, laid his hand on her slender fingers that concealed her face, and said: 

“I believe you are angry with me!” She pushed away his hand, with a slight movement, and said:  “Leave me.”

“Yes, unfortunately I must leave you.  Business takes me into the city and I will—­”

“You will let the young Alexandrians, with whom you revelled through the night, introduce you to new fair ones—­I know it.”