“The other”—­interrupted the philologist with stern displeasure, “the other is the very incarnation of the haughtiness, the luxury pushed to insanity, and the infamous depravity of the metropolis.  That dissipated ladies-man.”

“I will not defend his character,” said Favorinus in his pleasant voice, and with an elegance in his pronunciation of Greek which delighted even the grammarian.  “His ways and doings are disgraceful; still you must allow that his manners are tinged with the charm of Hellenic beauty, that the Charites kissed him at his birth, and though, by the stern laws of virtue we must condemn him, he deserves to be crowned with praise and garlands from the point of view of the feeling for beauty.”

“Oh! for the artist who wants a model he is a choice morsel.”

“The Athenian judges acquitted Phryne because she was beautiful.”

“They did wrong.”

“Hardly in the eyes of the gods, whose fairest works must deserve our respect.”

“Still poison may be kept in the most beautiful vessels.”

“And yet body and soul always to a certain extent correspond.”

“And can you dare to call the handsome Verus the admirable Verus?”

“No, but the reckless Lucius Aurelius Verus is at the same time the gayest and pleasantest of all the Romans, free alike from spite or carefulness, he troubles himself with no doctrines of virtue, and as when a thing pleases him, he desires to possess it, he endeavors to give pleasure to every one else.”

“He has wasted his pains so far as I am concerned.”

“I do as he wishes.”

The last words both of the philologer and the sophist were spoken somewhat louder than was usual in the presence of the Empress.  Sabina, who had just told the praetor which residence her husband had decided on inhabiting, drew up her shoulders and pinched her lips as if in pain, while Verus turned a face of indignation—­a face which was manly in spite of all the delicacy and regularity of the features—­on the two speakers, and his fine bright eyes caught the hostile glance of Apollonius.

An intimation of aversion to his person was one of the things which to him were past endurance; he hastily passed his hand through his blue-black hair, which was only slightly grizzled at the temples and flowed uncurled, but in soft waving locks round his head, and said, not heeding Sabina’s question as to his opinion of her husband’s latest instructions: 

“He is a repulsive fellow, that wrangling logician; he has an evil eye that threatens mischief to us all, and his trumpet voice cannot hurt you more than it does me.  Must we endure him at table with us every day?”

“So Hadrian desires.”

“Then I shall start for Rome,” said Verus decidedly.  “My wife wants to be back with her children, and as praetor, it is more fitting that I should stay by the Tiber than by the Nile.”

The words were spoken as lightly as though they were nothing more than a proposition to go to supper, but they seemed to agitate the Empress deeply, for her head, which had seemed almost a fixture during her conversation with Titianus, now shook so violently that the pearls and jewels rattled in the erection of curls.  There she sat for some seconds staring into her lap.