"Isn't she there?"
"Yes! I discovered her by accident, looking down from the wall. She has hidden herself behind beams and rubbish near the Porta Decumana, like a sick birdling which creeps into some corner to die alone with its head under its wing. Give her time! Perhaps she will submit to it."
Ausonius yielded reluctantly as the Tribune, with gentle force, took his arm, turned him in the opposite direction, and led him back. He was thoroughly angry, and besides, felt ashamed in Saturninus's presence.
"Soon, I hope," he said angrily.
"Yes," replied the Tribune slowly. "Unless--unless some one else has won her heart."
"That she positively denied. She was enraged at the mere question; and falsehood is the perverse little thing's smallest fault. She is still scarcely more than a child. You see how she behaves. Only a child, an untutored child, could be led into such conduct."
But the Roman General shrugged his shoulders. "Let us wait. I would far rather see her yours than a Barbarian's. But think of the offer made by that Adalus! That can only--"
"Certainly. But it doesn't prove that she loves him."
He opposed with angry obstinacy a conjecture which might forever frustrate his wishes, and rejected the suggestion of his friend the more vehemently, the more persistently this fear, though repressed, constantly returned to his mind.
"By the way," he asked the Tribune, to change the conversation, "what do you mean to do with the prisoners? Let them both escape?"