After a while she bethought her of the slave Folces, the one human link left now between herself and the man whom she loved and who was gone from her.
With reverent hands she smoothed out the couch, the pillow which had supported his head, the coverlet which had lain over him. She was loth to go from this room whose every corner seemed still to hold something of his personality and whose every wall seemed to hold an echo of his voice.
She would have stayed here for hours longer, talking to that absent personality, powerful and mysterious more than ever now, listening to the rugged voice which she would never hear again. But there was something that she must do ere she gave herself over finally to her dreams; there was a duty to accomplish which she knew he would ask of her.
Therefore—after a last, long, all-embracing look on the place which would for ever be as a sanctuary in her sight—she went back to the studio at last, and herself going to the door she called Folces back to her.
"The praefect of Rome, good Folces?" she asked as soon as the man had entered, "wilt see him again?"
"Taurus Antinor named Anglicanus hath left Rome to-day on his way to Syria, O Augusta!" said the man, humbly insisting on the name of his master.
"Dost not go with him?"
"He hath commanded me to stay here and to look after his household until such time as he doth direct."
"His household?" she said. "I had not thought of that. What is to become of his house in Rome, his villa at Ostia and his slaves?"
"The praefect of Rome," said Folces, "made ere he died a testament wherein he did command the freedom of all his slaves, and ordered a certain sum of money to be set aside which will enable even the humblest amongst us all to live decently like freedmen. The house in Rome and the villa at Ostia are to be sold, whilst the remainder of Taurus Antinor's private fortune is to be administered by his general agents. He said that he would see to it later on. I am still his slave; he did not confide in me."