“Hush, wife!” said Paris. “The lady desires rest. Keep silence.”
Then again Domitia fell a-musing, and the player and his wife whispered to each other about the destination of the several toys.
Somehow she had hitherto not thought of the classes of men and women below her station as having like feelings, like longings, like natures to her own. They had been to her as puppets, even as those clay figures ranged on the table, mostly grotesque. Now that great pulse of love that throbs through the world of humanity made itself felt, it was as though scales fell from her eyes, and the puppets became beings of flesh and blood to be considered, capable of happiness and of suffering, of virtue as well as of vice.
“I have a little lamp here—with a fish—the fish on it,” said Paris in a whisper. “It is for Luke, the Physician.”
“What!” exclaimed Domitia, starting from her reverie, “you know him? We had a talk once, and it was broken off and never concluded. I would hear the end of what he was saying—some day.”
CHAPTER XVII.
THE SATURNALIA OF 69.
Eboracus brushed aside some urchins and girls blocking the door, looking in with eager, twinkling eyes at the strange lady and at the set out of dolls on the table.
There passed whispers and nudges from one to another—but all ceased as the British slave put together his hands as a swimmer and plunged through them.