He wandered on without thinking; the street in which he presently found himself must no doubt lead to the sea, and if he could once find himself on the shore he could not fail to make his way to Lochias.  By the time it was growing dark he was once more standing outside the little gate-house, and there he learnt from Doris that the Roman and her son had not yet returned.

What was he to do alone in the vast empty palace?  Were not the very slaves free to-day?  Why should not he too for once enjoy life independently and in his own way?  Full of the pleasant sense of being his own master and at liberty to walk in a road of his own choosing, he went onwards, and when he presently passed by the stall of a flower-seller, he began once more to think eagerly of Selene and the nosegay, which must long since have reached her hands.

He had heard from Pollux in the morning that the steward’s daughter was being tended by Christians in a little house not far from the sea-shore; indeed the sculptor himself had been quite excited as he told Antinous that he himself had peeped into the lighted room and had seen her.  ’A glorious creature’ he had called her, and had said that she had never looked more beautiful than in a recumbent attitude on her bed.

Antinous recalled all this and determined to venture on an attempt to see again the maiden whose image filled his heart and brain.

It was now dark and the same light which had allowed of the sculptor’s seeing Selene’s features might this evening reveal them to him also.  Full of passion and excitement, he got into the first litter he met with.  The swarthy bearers were far too slow for his longing, and more than once he flung to them as much money as they were wont to earn in a week, to urge them to a brisker pace.  At last he reached his destination; but seeing that several men and women robed in white, were going into the garden, he desired the bearers to carry him farther.  Close to a dark narrow lane which bounded the widow’s garden-plot on the east and led directly to the sea, he desired them to stop, got out of the litter and bid the slaves wait for him.  At the garden door he still found two men dressed in white, and one of the cynic philosophers who had sat by him on the bench near the Paneum.  He paced impatiently up and clown, waiting till these people should have disappeared, and thus passing again and again under the light of the torches that were stuck up by the gate.

The dry cynic’s prominent eyes were everywhere at once, and as soon as he perceived the peripatetic Bithynian he flung up his arm, exclaiming, as he pointed to him with a long, lean, stiff forefinger—­half to the Christians with whom he had been talking and half to the lad himself: 

“What does he want.  That fop! that over-dressed minion!  I know the fellow; with his smooth face and the silver quiver on his shoulder he believes he is Eros in person.  Be off with you, you house-rat.  The women and girls in here know how to protect themselves against the sort who parade the streets in rose-colored draperies.  Take yourself off, or you will make acquaintance with the noble Paulina’s slaves and clogs.  Hi! gate-keeper, here! keep an eye on this fellow.”