“Till my last day, till death, as my child, as the apple of my eye, as—­ dare I say it and believe it?—­as my love, my second self, my wife.”

“Oh!  Pontius, Pontius,” she exclaimed, grasping his broad, right hand in both her own.  “This hour restores to the orphaned Balbilla, father and mother and gives her besides the husband that she loves.”

“Mine, mine!” cried the architect.  “Immortal gods!  During half a lifetime I have never found time, in the midst of labor and fatigue, to indulge in the joys of love and now you give me with interest and compound interest the treasure you have so long withheld.”

“How can you, a reasonable man, so over-estimate the value of your possession?  But you shall find some good in it.  Life can no longer be conceived of as worth having without the possessor.”

“And to me it has so long seemed empty and cold without you, you strange, unique, incomparable creature.”

“But why did you not come sooner, and so give me no time to behave like a fool?”

“Because, because,” said Pontius, gravely, “such a flight towards the sun seemed to me too bold; because I remember that my father’s father—­”

“He was the noblest man that the ancestor of my house attracted to its greatness.”

“He was—­consider it duly at this moment—­he was your grandfather’s slave.”

“I know it, but I also know, that there is not a man on earth who is worthier of freedom than you are, or whom I could ask as humbly as I ask you:  Take me, poor, foolish Balbilla, to be your wife, guide me and make of me whatever you can, for your own honor and mine.”

The brief Nile voyage brought days and hours of the highest happiness to Balbilla and her lover.  Before the fleet sailed into the Mareotic harbor of Alexandria, Pontius revealed his happy secret to the Emperor.  Hadrian smiled for the first time since the death of his favorite, and desired the architect to bring Balbilla to him.

“I was wrong in my interpretation of the Pythian oracle,” said he, as he laid the poetess’s hand in that of Pontius.  “Would you like to know how it runs Pontius—­do not prompt me, my child.  Anything that I have read through once or twice I never forget.  Pythia said: 

    ’That which thou boldest most precious and dear shall be torn from
          thy keeping,
     And from the heights of Olympus, down shalt thou fall in the dust;
     Still the contemplative eye discerns under mutable sand-drifts
     Stable foundations of stone, marble and natural rock.’

“You have chosen well girl.  The oracle guaranteed you a safe road to tread through life.  As to the dust of which it speaks, it exists no doubt in a certain sense, but this hand wields the broom that will sweep it away.  Solemnize your marriage in Alexandria as soon as you will, but then come to Rome, that is the only condition I impose.  A thing I always have at heart is the introduction of