"It is not from the place of the gods that we feel, do and believe," he said. "The child's difficulties are heavy to it; it can not imagine them to be greater. So if thy reasoning hold, lady, perhaps the higher God smiles at the rage of Jove and the threats of Mars and the loves and pains of Venus. But Jove and Mars and Venus do not smile at them; nor does the child at his fallen sand-house or his ruined bauble. It is therefore a serious world for worldlings."
Junia lifted her white arms, and, dropping her head back between them against the divan, smiled up at the roof of the pavilion.
"I thought thee to be large and far-seeing," she said. "But go follow Flora, and thou shall either be driven mad with astonishment, or persuaded to look upon the world henceforward with mine eyes!"
CHAPTER XVI
A MATTER HANDLED WISELY
Flaccus Avillus, Proconsul of Egypt, held audience in his atrium. He received a commission of three from the Jews of Alexandria. One was Alexander Lysimachus, who came with a civil petition; the other two were despatched from the congregation with a hieratic memorial.
The three were stately and deliberate in manner, handsome even for their years, and as courtly as Jews can be when they bring up their native grace to the highest standard of culture. They were bearded, gowned in linen, covered with tarbooshes, and as they walked their indoor sandals made no sound upon the polished pavement of the atrium.
One wore on his left arm a phylactery, the last clinging to the old formality which had separated his fathers' class in Judea from the others, as a Pharisee. The second was an Alexandrian Sadducee. The third had over his shoulders the cloak of a magistrate.
Flaccus did not rise from his curule as they approached, but he returned their greetings with better grace than they had formerly expected of a Roman governor.