With a deep bow Titianus took the Empress’s right hand, covered with rings; but she withdrew it quickly from that of her husband’s friend and relative, as if she feared that the carefully-cherished limb--useless as it was for any practical purpose, a mere toy among hands--might suffer some injury, and wrapped it and her arm in her upper-robe. But she returned the prefect’s friendly greeting with all the warmth at her command. Though formerly at Rome she had been accustomed to see Titianus every day at her house, this was their first meeting in Alexandria; for the previous day, exhausted by the sufferings of her sea-voyage, she had been carried in a closed litter to the Caesareum, and this morning she had declined to receive his visit, as her whole time was given up to her physicians, bathing-women, and coiffeurs. “How can you survive in this country?” she said in a low but harsh voice, which always made the hearer feel that it was that of a dull, fractious, childless woman. “At noon the sun burns you up, and in the evening it is so cold--so intolerably cold!’ As she spoke she drew her robe closer round her, but Titianus, pointing to the stoves in the middle of the hall, said: “I hoped we had succeeded in cutting the bowstrings of the Egyptian winter, and it is but a feeble weapon.” “Still young, still imaginative, still a poet!” said the Empress wearily. “I saw your wife a couple of hours since. Africa seems to suit her less well; I was shocked to see Julia, the handsome matron, so altered. She does not look well.” “Years are the foe of beauty.” “Frequently they are, but true beauty often resists their attacks.” “You are yourself the living proof of your assertion.” “That is as much as to say that I am growing old.” “Nay--only that you know the secret of remaining beautiful.” “You are a poet!” murmured the Empress with a twitch of her thin under-lip. “Affairs of state do not favor the Muses.” “But I call any man a poet who sees things more beautiful than they are, or who gives them finer names than they deserve--a poet, a dreamer, a flatterer--for it comes to that.” “Ah! modesty can always find words to repel even well-merited admiration.” “Why this foolish bandying of words?” sighed Sabina, flinging herself back in her chair. “You have been to school under the hair-splitting logicians in the Museum here, and I have not. Over there sits Favorinus, the sophist; I dare say he is proving to Ptolemaeus that the stars are mere specks of blood in our eyes, which we choose to believe are in the sky. Florus, the historian, is taking note of this weighty discussion; Pancrates, the poet, is celebrating the great thoughts of the philosopher. As to what part the philologist there can find to take in this important event you know better than I. What is the man’s name?” “Apollonius.” “Hadrian has nick-named him ‘the obscure.’ The more difficult it is to understand the discourses of these gentlemen the more highly are they esteemed.”