His words had surprised and delighted her.  Pontius always understood her, and did not deserve that she should wound him.  So she let him gaze into her soul, and told him how much she loved Antinous so long as he was absent.  Then she laughed and confessed that she was perfectly indifferent to him as soon as they were together.

When, after the Bithynian’s death, she lost all self-control he simply let her alone, and begged Claudia to do the same.

The same day that the body was found it was burnt on a pile of precious wood.  Hadrian had refused to see it when he learnt that the death by drowning had terribly distorted the lad’s features.

A few hours after the ashes of the Bithynian had been collected and brought in a golden vase to Hadrian, the Nile fleet was once more under sail, this time with the Emperor on board one of the boats, to proceed without farther halt to Alexandria.

Hadrian remained alone with only his slave and his secretary on the boat that conveyed him; but he several times sent to Pontius to desire him to come from the ship on which he was and visit him on his.  He liked to hear the architect’s deep voice, and discussed with him the plans which Pontius had sketched for his mausoleum in Rome and the monument to his lost favorite which he proposed to have erected from designs of his own in the large city which he intended should stand on the site of the little town of Besa, and which he had already named Antinoe.  But these discussions only took up a limited number of hours, and then the architect was at liberty to return to Sabina’s boat, on which Balbilla also lived.

A few days after they had quitted Besa he was sitting alone with the poetess on the deck of the Nile boat which, borne by the current and propelled by a hundred oars, was rapidly and steadily nearing its destination.  Ever since the death of the hapless favorite Pontius had avoided mentioning him to her.  She had now become as observant and as talkative as before, and in her eyes there even shone at times a ray of the old sunny gayety of her nature.  The architect thought he comprehended the characteristic change in her sentiments, and would not allude to the cause of the violent but transient fever under which she had suffered.  “What did you discuss with Caesar to-day?” asked Balbilla of her friend.  Pontius looked down at the ground and considered whether he could venture to utter the name of Antinous before the poetess.  Balbilla observed his hesitation and said: 

“Speak on; I can hear anything.  That folly is past and over.”

“Caesar is at work at the plans for a new town to be built and called Antinoe, and a sketch for a monument to his ill-fated favorite,” said Pontius.  “He will not accept any help, but I have to teach him to discriminate what is possible from what is impossible.”

“Ah! he is always gazing at the stars and you look steadily at the road on which you are walking.”