"But I do!" said Paula. "See, then, is this how it is with thee?" She glanced at her companions with lowered lids; they drew closer, silent. "Night and day his voice, his eyes, are with thee. His name is a song which thy heart singeth dumbly; when it is spoken it makes thee quiver like a harp on which a certain note is touched. At the very thought of him, of his words, and his caresses, thou dost flush and tremble as though his hands had touched thee. (Girls, see the color burn!) A dear and tender pain is at thy heart; thou livest in dreams, and art possessed by aching unrest which yet is sweet. Is it not even thus with thee?"
"Ay," said Varia, very low. "It is even thus."
"Then thou dost love this man," said Paula. Her tone was final, admitting of no doubt.
Varia, flushed from throat to brow, looked at her with shining eyes.
"Ay, I love him—I know it now! For night and day his voice and eyes are with me, and his name and the words he hath said are a song to me. And night and day I hear him calling me, from far and far away, as so many times he hath called me to the garden. But now—woe is me! I may not come."
"Get married, sweet, to him who loves thee, and then thou mayest have him whom thou dost love," said Nigidia. "If one has courage to do as one wills, and cleverness not to be found out, may not one do as one chooses? I know that Rubria, wife of Maximus Crispus, hath two lovers, and one of them is guest in this house. Who is thy lover, dear? What his name and station?"
Varia hesitated. The impulse which kept her from revealing the truth was dumb and blind, but it was there, and it saved her. She bit her lip.
"I will not tell!" she said in distress.
"We promise not to take him from thee," said Nigidia, and laughed with the rest.
"He sure must be the highest in the land, to win thy love," chimed in Paula, ready to carry on the game. "Perhaps it is Fabian, the friend of Marius, who hath the eyes of a god. Or perhaps it is old Aulus Plautus, of Gobannium. He is a widower these twenty years, and hath no teeth and but one eye—but his jewels sparkle enough for the other."