“Like the wave in my lady’s hair,” sighed Plancus.
“Abominable!” exclaimed Duilia, “when the ripple in my hair is natural and abiding, and that in the water is made and disappears.”
“Because, Mistress, the wavelets look up, see, and fall back in despair.”
“That is better,” said the lady.
“And the swelling sail, like your divine bosom, has fallen, as when——”
“Ugh! I should hope the texture of my skin was not like coarse sail-cloth; get behind me, Plancus. Here, Lucilla, how am I looking? I would have my lord see me to the best advantage.”
“Madam,” said the female slave, advancing, “the envious sun is about to hide his head in the west. He cannot endure, after having feasted on your beauty, to surrender it to a mortal.”
“Is not one eyebrow a trifle higher than the other?” asked Duilia, looking at herself in a hand mirror of polished metal.
“It is indeed so, lady, but has not the Paphian Goddess in the statue of Phidias the same characteristic? Defect it is not, but a token of divinity.”
“Ah,” said Duilia, “it is hereditary. The Julian race descends from Venus Genetrix, and I have the blood of the immortal ancestress in me.”