“Meanwhile I will try and keep them alive, as being good rate-payers.”

“And does Hadrian share your wish?”

“Without doubt.”

“Your successor may perhaps bring him to another mind.”

“He always acts according to his own judgment, and for the present I am in office,” answered Titianus haughtily.

“And may the God of the Jews long preserve you in it!” retorted Sabina scornfully.

CHAPTER VII.

Before Titianus could open his lips to reply, the principal door of the room was opened cautiously but widely, and the praetor Lucius Aurelius Verus, his wife Domitia Lucilla, the young Balbilla and, last of all, Annaeus Florus, the historian, entered.  All four were in the best spirits, and immediately after the preliminary greetings, were eager to report what they had seen at Lochias; but Sabina waved silence with her hand, and breathed out: 

“No, no; not at present.  I feel quite exhausted.  This long waiting, and then—­my smelling-bottle, Verus.  Leukippe, bring me a cup of water with some fruit-syrup—­but not so sweet as usual.”

The Greek slave-girl hastened to execute this command, and the Empress, as she waved an elegant bottle carved in onyx, under her nostrils, went on: 

“It is a little eternity—­is it not, Titianus, that we have been discussing state affairs?  You all know how frank I am and that I cannot be silent when I meet with perverse opinions.  While you have been away I have had much to hear and to say; it would have exhausted the strength of the strongest.  I only wonder you don’t find me more worn out, for what can be more excruciating for a woman, that to be obliged to enter the lists for manly decisiveness against a man who is defending a perfectly antagonistic view?  Give me water, Leukippe.”

While the Empress drank the syrup with tiny sips twitching her thin lips over it, Verus went up to the prefect and asked him in an under tone: 

“You were a long while alone with Sabina, cousin?”

Yes,” replied Titianus, and he set his teeth as he spoke and clenched his fist so hard that the praetor could not misunderstand, and replied in a low voice: 

“She is much to be pitied, and particularly just now she has hours—­”

“What sort of hours?” asked Sabina taking the cup from her lips.

“These,” replied Verus quickly, “in which I am not obliged to occupy myself in the senate or with the affairs of state.  To whom do I owe them but to you?”

With these words he approached the mature beauty, and taking the goblet out of her hand with affectionate subservience, as a son might wait on his honored and suffering mother, he gave it to the Greek slave.  The Empress bowed her thanks again and again to the praetor with much affability, and then said, with a slight infusion of cheerfulness in her tones: