Bent double, he was carrying the old Didimus on his back.
At the end of a few minutes they reached a secret door opening on the Campagna.
On returning to the house, Arsinoë quickly undressed Myrrha and put her to bed, still in a dead faint. Kneeling by her side the elder sister long kissed and chafed the thin, yellow, and inert hands. A pang of agonising presentiment shot through her heart.
The face of the sleeper bore a strange expression. Never had it reflected so bodiless a charm. All the little body seemed transparent and frail as the sides of an alabaster jar illumined by an inner fire.
XVIII
Late one evening in a marshy wood not far from the Rhine, between the fortified post, Tres Tabernæ and the Roman town of Argentoratum,[1] conquered a short time previously by the Alemanni, two soldiers who had lost their way were slouching along. One named Aragaris, an awkward and red-headed giant, a Sarmatian in the Roman service; the other Strombix, a lean and frowning little Syrian.
The spaces between the trunks of trees were densely dark. A fine rain was falling through warm air. The birches diffused an odour of damp leaves, and far off a cuckoo was calling.
At every crack of the branches the startled Strombix began to quake and seized the fist of his companion.
"Oh, cousin! cousin!"