"Because my prophetic heart promised me, fairest Balbilla, that I should find you here."
"And that you call honest!" cried the poetess, hitting the praetor a blow with the stick of the ostrich-feather fan she held in her hand. "Only listen, Lucilla, your husband declares he came here for my sake." The praetor looked reproachfully at the speaker, but she whispered:
"Due punishment for a dishonest man." Then, raising her voice, she said:
"Do you know, Lucilla, that if I remain unmarried, your husband is not wholly innocent in the matter."
"Alas! yes, I was born too late for you," interrupted Verus, who knew very well what the poetess was about to say.
"Nay—no misunderstanding!" cried Balbilla. "For how can a woman venture upon wedlock when she cannot but fear the possibility of getting such a husband as Verus."
"And what man," retorted the praetor, "would ever be so bold as to court Balbilla, could he hear how cruelly she judges an innocent admirer of beauty?"
"A husband ought not to admire beauty—only the one beauty who is his wife."
"Ah Vestal maiden," laughed Verus. "I am meanwhile punishing you by withholding from you a great secret which interests us all. No, no, I am not going to tell—but I beg you my lady wife to take her to task, and teach her to exercise some indulgence so that her future husband may not have too hard a time of it."
"No woman can learn to be indulgent," replied Lucilla. "Still we practise indulgence when we have no alternative, and the criminal requires us to make allowance for him in this thing or the other."