"Rome!" she repeated, looking at him again. "Yes, without having seen Rome or Jerusalem or Alexandria."
Agrippa tilted his head thoughtfully.
"Then, it is good only for a time—for as long as the surfeit of civilization lasts—which lasts no longer the moment one realizes the Arab is not devoted to the bath and that he counts his women among his cattle!"
She laughed outright. "I remember thou didst indorse him not a moment since! Wherefore the change?"
"Refinement in all things! To get it into an Arab, he has to be modified by alien blood."
"A truce! I am in Alexandria; her poetic wickedness has not been entirely exhausted. I—meet new, desirable things—daily!"
Her fan was between them as she spoke and he took the stick of it just above where she held it and was putting it aside when the proconsul, resplendent in a tunic of white and purple, appeared in the colonnade. Beside him was Cypros in her Jewish matron's dress.
Agrippa put the fan out of the way and made his answer.
"Forget not that the East, whether Arab or Alexandrian, is intense—once won. It might harass thee, if thou weariest of it, before it wearies of thee—even to the extreme of pursuing thee to Rome."
The proconsul and the princess approached. The deep-set eyes of the Roman wore a peculiarly satisfied look.