"And now, is there anything else you desire to say, or to request or any query you wish to put to me? If so, I authorize and command you to speak."
Choking, I muttered that I had nothing further to say.
"In that case," said the Emperor, standing up, "this interview is at an end. You shall be conducted to your conference with the present owner of your former estates, which I hope may turn out to your full satisfaction."
And he clapped his hands for a page.
The page conducted me through endless corridors, twisting and turning. During that brief interval I did a great deal of very confused thinking. I was dazed and puzzled. I had realized as he ended his harangue that it would have been ridiculous to ask that man to change his mind or even modify a decision. He was not that sort of Emperor. Yet he had pledged himself to restore to me my estates or recompense me in cash. I felt that he meant it; yet I knew that he would never have uttered that pledge if he had felt that there was the remotest chance of his ever being called on to fulfill it. He was too parsimonious to promise such generosity unless absolutely certain that the occasion for it would never confront him. Yet how could he escape it and why did he feel so sure? How could any beneficiary from such a grant of confiscated property be induced to disgorge except by Imperial order and that with full compensation? Why had Severus so sedulously, yet so obviously, avoided naming the present holder of my former property? The Emperor was an austere man, stern by habit, almost grim by nature, certainly serious. He had spoken seriously. Yet I sensed a jest somewhere in the background of his thoughts. I almost believed I had caught the glint of a twinkle in his hard, gray eyes. Could I be wrong? Could I be right?
It seemed like a jest to send me to an interview with a beneficiary of a grant of confiscated property, enriched thereby, and to imply, even to suggest, that he might be induced to restore to me his acquisitions, without pressure, merely by amicable converse. I conjured up before me the probable appearance of the man I was to meet; perhaps gross and greedy like Satronius Satro, perhaps dwarfish and mean like Vedius Vedianus, probably like anyone of the avaricious magnates, associated with Pullanius, whom I had met while impersonating Salsonius Salinator.
I resented the possibility of an Imperial jest. I was more and more dazed and puzzled the nearer I approached the inevitable interview and the nearer I approached it the more futile and hopeless it seemed and the more despondent I grew.
The page paused at a door, opened it, waved me in and shut it.
I was in a small parlor, and there was no other man in it; I saw only one seated human figure, a woman, a lady, a graceful young woman, a charming young woman.
Then, suddenly, I saw through it all.