Cracis was silent, and stood drawing his son closer to him so that he could rest his arm upon the boy’s shoulder, while his visitor stood before him with his white robe gathered up so as to leave free his extended arm.
For a few minutes neither spoke, and from the garden there came loud and clear the joyous trilling of the birds.
“You do not take my hand,” said Caius Julius, passionately.
“No, not yet,” said Cracis; “but do not mistake me. There is no bitterness or pride left in my breast. That died out years ago. I am only thinking.”
“Ha!” cried his visitor, with a sigh of relief, “and forgetting the courtesy due to a long-estranged friend.”
“Caius Julius, sit down. You are welcome to my simple, humble home. Marcus, my boy, you can believe that all our visitor said was to try his old friend’s son to see of what metal he was made. He is a man who, for years past, has found the necessity of testing those he would have to trust, of placing them in the balance to try their worthiness and weight. Boy, we are honoured to-day by the presence of Rome’s greatest son, your father’s oldest friend, then his greatest enemy, and now, in the fulness of time, his brother once again.”
As he spoke he took a step forward with extended hands, which the future conqueror of the world clasped at once in his own, and once more there was silence in the room.
A minute later Cracis drew back and motioned to his son, who, earnest and alert, stepped forward, to find himself clasped to their visitor’s breast, before he was released, to draw back wondering whether he liked or hated this man of whose prowess he had heard so much, and stood gazing at him wonderingly, as Julius, the Caesar yet to be, sank back, quivering with emotion, in the nearest seat.
A few minutes later Marcus stood trying to catch his father’s eye, for he too had sunk into a chair and sat back gazing away through the open window at the sunlit hills.
At last he turned his eye upon his son and read the question in his speaking face.