“And the risk is too small to think of. All you have to do is to stay abed and keep still. Utta will never tell and she won’t let anyone in. Numisia will not suspect anything: any Vestal has the right to twenty-four hours abed and no questions asked, Meffia spent one day out of ten in bed. Manlia takes a day’s rest a dozen times a year. Even I have done it several times, when I was sore all over with jolting too long at full gallop over our so-called perfect roads. I was abed all day about a month ago, and certainly I rove hard enough and long enough yesterday and I was in the Temple half the night. I’ll be back here long before noon to-morrow. “Don’t you see how easy it is? Flexinna has called on Brinnaria to-day, as usual, except the hour. And Flexinna often calls on Brinnaria at odd hours. Flexinna makes a short call and goes out to her litter. Flexinna makes an excursion into the country in a litter with drawn curtains, her husband riding by it. Nobody can take any notice of that. Flexinna returns from her outing, calls at once on Brinnaria, pays a brief call, goes out, gets into her litter and goes home. Brinnaria, refreshed by twenty-four hours abed, goes about her duties. The plan simply can’t fail.” She had on all Flexinna’s clothes by the end of her explanation and was adjusting er two veils, one over her face, the other tied over the broad-brimmed travelling-hat, so that the edges of the brim, drawn down on either side, almost met under her chin and her face was lost in it. Flexinna continued to protest feebly, but Brinnaria made her compose herself in the bed. “You can have anything you want to eat,” she reminded her, “and as much as you want, any time.” Utta came at the first signal. “Now listen,” Brinnaria instructed her, “I am in that bed and I am going to stay there until the lady who has just called on me comes back. That will be tomorrow morning. I am tired and need rest, the same as I did the day after the axle broke and I barked my knee in the gravel. I am not going out now; oh, no the lady going out is the lady who called on me. Do you understand?” Utta understood. Flexinna, quaking in the bed, prayed under her breath. “For Castor’s sake,” was her farewell, “d-d-don’t forget to s-s-stutter.” In a fashionable costume of brilliant pink silk with pearly gray trimmings, feeling horribly conspicuous, but unaccosted and, as far as she could judge, unnoticed, Brinnaria descended the stairs, traversed the courtyard and passed the portal. Just outside, in the nook left by the angle of the wall enclosing the Temple, she found the litter set down clear of the throng that surged and jostled ceaselessly up and down the Holy Street. The bearers stood about it, one holding Vocco’s horse; all, like the street-crowd, vague and unreal in the fog. Through the fog Vocco strode towards her and checked, amazed. She put her fingers to the folds of the veil over her lips.