"Well," said Agathemer, "since remaining here means certain death and since there seems a chance of final salvation for you through the efforts of your friends and especially those of Opsitius and Vedia, since they will need plenty of time to save you, if you can be saved, from every point of view the right course of action is not merely inaction, not merely hiding, but an immediate and complete disappearance. If you are found you will be ordered to kill yourself or will be put to death. If you cannot be found you cannot be killed or made to kill yourself. Since you cannot be found you will stay alive until you can be rehabilitated with the Emperor. If that cannot be done or is not done, at least you will be alive. My deduction is, disappear at once and completely. You have many times, for a lark, disguised yourself as an ordinary country proprietor or small farmer and mingled with the crowd at a fair without being recognized. What you have done for an evening in jest now attempt in earnest and for as long a period as is necessary. And to begin with, vanish from here at once and completely." "But how?" I queried. "If you are to disappear," said Agathemer, "why should I waste time in explaining how. Let us disappear together, leaving no trace and let us do it at once." "But," I cried, "I could never consent to anything like that! You are not in any danger. You will be manumitted by my will and you can live safely, comfortably and at ease. Why should I drag you into I know not what miseries, hardships and privations along with me? Tell me what to do and I will proceed to do it. But do you stay here." "If I told you my plan," said Agathemer, "you could not carry it out alone. My scheme for your escape and vanishment pivots on my disappearing along with you. If you agree, as I beg that you will, we shall both be safe, I hope and trust; alive, able to return here if it can be arranged, able to live elsewhere, somehow, if it cannot be arranged. If you refuse your assent, I shall die with you or soon after you; I am resolute not to survive you." "I agree," I said. "I am under your orders henceforth, not you under mine." Agathemer at once guided me into the house and upstairs to his rooms, for he inhabited the guest-suite next my rooms, which had been my uncle's. "The first thing to do," he said, "is for both of us to eat heartily, for we do not know when we shall eat again. I have been choicy and whimmy about my eating since I came back here and mostly my meals have revolted me and I have left the _triclinium_ practically unfed, whereas I have often been seized with imperative hunger between meals. I have an overabundant supply of all sorts of tempting cold viands up here."