Athenaïs hesitated, but only for a second. Giving him what he felt to be a grateful glance, she advanced two steps. “A mutual agreement,” smiled Polemo. “This is as it should be.” He whispered in the ear of the bride something that Crispus could not catch. Whatever it was it evoked from her a little ripple of laughter, so sweet and silvery, that Crispus was put into sympathy with her at once. “If her face be as witching as her laughter!” thought he. But her laugh, however charming to Crispus, had a very different effect upon Titus. An attentive spectator would have seen him start violently, and turn pale. He seemed on the point of breaking out into words, but checking himself, he stood mute, his whole attitude expressive of dejection, a feeling that seemed to increase as the nuptial ceremony proceeded. Crispus, occupied with the matter in hand, did not notice his friend’s agitation. At a sign from Polemo Crispus drew near to Athenaïs, Titus acting as paranymph, or, to use the modern phrase, “best man,” the veiled attendant performing a similar office for the bride. Athenaïs, directed by the king, put forth a white and prettily-shaped hand, which Crispus took in his own. If her feelings bore any resemblance to those of Crispus she must have felt like one in a dream, for he could scarcely believe the scene to be real. An hour ago he would have laughed had anyone prophesied for him an early marriage, and yet here he was on the point of marrying a woman of whose past history he knew nothing, a woman from whom, as soon as the ceremony was over, he must part, without seeing her face, without receiving so little as one word from her, part for a space of time to be measured, not by months, but by years! What would his friends at Rome think of a marriage contracted under auspices so strange? “Weddeth Crispus as a fool weddeth?” would surely be their comment. Thus much, however, could be said for his act: it had his father’s sanction, and with this thought Crispus tried to suppress all misgivings. Mechanically he found himself repeating after Polemo the final words of the rite that was to unite him for life with the unknown Athenaïs. “Leaving all other, and keeping only to thee, I, Crispus Cestius Gallus, patrician of Rome, do take thee, Athenaïs, to be my lawful wife, to be openly acknowledged as such when it shall please thee to claim me by this token.” So saying, he slid upon her slender finger the golden ring given him by Polemo. No sound came from the woman who was now his wife, but her agitation was shown by her trembling hand, by her accelerated breathing, by her attitude, half-reclining, in the arms of her attendant. Her hand seemed to close voluntarily upon his own. The thrilling pressure of those fair fingers imparted to him somehow the belief that, originally reluctant to come to the ceremony, she now viewed it with pleasure, a thought that gave him pleasure in turn.