Verus needed a longer time than the boy, to make his way through the crowd. At the door of the prefect’s residence he laid aside his mask, and in an anteroom where the steward was sitting on a couch waiting for his daughter, he arranged his hair and the folds of his toga, and was then conducted to the lady Julia with whom he hoped, once more, to see the charming Arsinoe.
But in the reception-room, instead of Arsinoe he found his own wife and the poetess Balbilla and her companion. He greeted the ladies gaily, amiably and gracefully, as usual, and then, as he looked enquiringly round the large room without concealing his disappointment, Balbilla came up to him and asked him in a low voice:
“Can you be honest, Verus?”
“When circumstances allow it, yes.”
“And will they allow it here?”
“I should suppose so.”
“Then answer me truly. Did you come here for Julia’s sake, or did you come—”
“Well?”
“Or did you expect to find the fair Roxana with the prefect’s wife?”
“Roxana?” asked Verus, with a cunning smile. “Roxana! Why she was the wife of Alexander the Great, and is long since dead, but I care only for the living, and when I left the merry tumult in the streets it was simply and solely—”