From house-door to house-door the streets were packed with crowds eager to see her pass and loud to acclaim her. Through cheers, good wishes, loud jokes, merry longs and cries of “Talassio! Talassio!” she passed along the upper part of the Fagutal, and past the flank of the Baths of Titus to the Carinae.
Her bridal dress of pearl-gray, with the flame-colored bridal veil, reminded her more than a little of that costume of Flexinna’s which she had worn to Aricia and back, only that was mostly pink, this mostly gray.
She looked well in it and wore the six braids and the headband more naturally than most brides, having been habituated to them for thirty years, since all Vestals always wore the bridal coiffure.
At the doorway of Almo’s house, the bearer of the white-thorn torch halted and faced about inside the door, his two little brothers let go her hands, Almo himself caught her up clear of the pavement and swung her clear of the door-sill. As he held her in the air, nestling to him, she repeated the formula:
“Where you are Caius, I am Caia.”
When he set her down inside the house she was at last a married woman.
She turned and watched the scramble for the white-thorn torch which its bearer first put out and then threw among the crowd after the slaves had also put out their torches.
So watching, Almo’s arm about her, she became aware of a strange something in the look of the crowd and of the street.
“What makes it so light?” she asked Almo. “Why are the tops of their heads all bright that way?”
Lutorius, who was near them, explained: