Her heart throbbed warmly. So her friends had already consulted about her escape! They were giving her the safest direction, the part of the camp where her companions would wait for her. But they could not possibly mean that she should try to make her way now, without further delay, through the lake gate, that is, through the "Porta Decumana," so closely guarded day and night. Not now! But when? Evidently as soon as something happened which would render escape possible; then she was to choose that direction. But what was to happen? An attack of the Alemanni? Ausonius laughed at it. Even cautious Saturninus had said: "Unless they fly over it like the swallows that are now preparing for departure, they will not come into this solid camp." So she racked her little brains, pondering over all sorts of possibilities which might bring her liberty against or with the will of the Romans. Should she appeal to Ausonius again? No! A strange timidity had taken possession of her ever since her last interview with him. She had never cherished any affection for the clever, eloquent man except the feeling a daughter has for a father; but recently, in making the proposal to take her with him, his eyes had rested on her so strangely. Never had he looked at her so before. It was like the gaze Saturninus fixed upon her when he seized her outside of the forest hut--but never again, not even when he told her that she belonged to him and he would not release her. So it happened that the sensitive girl, alarmed by the suddenly discovered ardor of the older man, felt safer and more at ease with the younger but undemonstrative one. She avoided Ausonius; she almost sought Saturninus, to whom, at the beginning and during the whole course of her captivity, she had learned to be grateful as to a watchful guardian. Often and often, since reading Bruna's message, she walked toward the lake gate, without hoping to find it unwatched or carelessly guarded,--the Tribune kept too strict a rule, too sharp an oversight for that,--but to impress upon her mind the exact locality of the streets and tents which might afford a hiding-place near the gate where she might await, close at hand, the most favorable moment. She had soon chosen for this purpose a towering heap of beams, gabions, and boards piled one above another, which had not been used in building the camp and had been left here: it rose high above her head, and when behind it, she was concealed from the view of those at the gate or in the street between the tents. But she never lingered long at the spot, lest she might arouse suspicion.