I was vexed, but let him talk on, as being the best means of getting myself free from him without explanation; and he, following close behind me, kept pouring his jests into my ear, till, I suppose, he got a clearer view of my face. For he suddenly checked himself, saying, “But, my dear Silanus, pardon me if something is really wrong. You would not, I am sure, let my idle talk pain you. Your servant is here with baggage. I fear some bad news is taking you from Nicopolis.” Then I briefly explained. He had some slight acquaintance with Scaurus and was instantly and sincerely apologetic. “I was a fool,” said he, “not to have noticed that something was amiss. Really I am grieved. And Scaurus, too! That fine old soldier! Often have I heard my father speak of his splendid service in Moesia. Well, Silanus, there are humanities as well as philosophies. Believe me, I feel with you. Farewell! Forgive me as sincerely as I condemn myself.” He pressed my hand, and I his. He was a good fellow at heart and died in Syria, a soldier’s death—such as Scaurus would have approved and no Cynic could have censured. In a few minutes, we were outside the port, seeing from a distance (without hearing) the bustle on the quay. It was not an unpleasing scene—now. A few minutes more, and the whole of the city stood out as a bright picture in a framework of fields. Presently Nicopolis was receding and lessening. Hills rose up behind. The frame was becoming the picture and Nicopolis a small part in it. I paced the deck, this way and that, turning in my mind all that had befallen me since I had gazed on these same scenes in reversed order, arriving from Italy. How few days ago in time! How many ages ago in thought and experience! “What strange things,” I exclaimed, “what marvellous things have happened to me! Am I not a changed man?” Then a sense of unreality began to creep over me. “Am I not, after all, the same Silanus, recovering from a dream? Have these ‘strange things’ been real things? Have they not been mere pictures—pictures of the mind, phantasms, dreams, from which I, the old Silanus, am now awaking to find myself just what I was in old days when I was wasting my time in Rome?”