“Oh, b-b-be sensible,” Flexinna admonished her. “You know the k-k-kind he is. He’s b-b-bound to impute to everybody what he would d-d-do in their p-p-place. Any man under the same circumstances would jump at the same suspicions.” “But why?” queried Brinnaria, bewildered and angry. “Think a minute,” said Flexinna. “To suspect all women is a c-c-convention, almost an axiom, with most men. All men like C-C-Calvaster assume that every married woman is interested in some man b-b-besides her husband, or in almost any man, and if married women are under suspicion, on the assumption that one husband is not enough, of c-c-course you Vestals, who haven’t even a husband, are doubly under suspicion.” “Bah!” snarled Brinnaria, “you make me cross!” “Facts are facts,” Flexinna summed up. Brinnaria did not retort. She had climbed out of the tank and was seated on the edge, the drops streaming off her in rivulets, watching the ripples her toes’ made in the water. “Facts are facts,” she echoed, “and conjectures are merely conjectures; what is more, conjectures ought to have some basis in fact. You assert, as if you know it to be true, that Calvaster expected Almo to meet me to-day. But Almo is at Falerii.” “No, he’s not,” Flexinna retorted; “he’s b-b-been in t-t-town t-t-ten d-d-days and has had the old house on the C-C-Carinae reopened. He’s settling d-d-down to live in Rome.” Brinnaria flushed. “I think,” she said, scrambling to her feet, “that he might have had enough consideration for me to stay in the country.” “So d-d-do I,” said Flexinna. CHAPTER X - CONFERENCE SOME months later, during one of the brief and infrequent breathing spells in his ten years’ fight to beat off the raids of the Marcomanni and other Germanic tribes, Aurelius returned from the Rhine frontier to Rome. As soon as she was reasonably sure that the Emperor was rested from the fatigues of his journey and had disposed of the worst of his accumulated routine duties, Brinnaria sought a second audience with the chief of the nation.