spoke to her in an undertone.

"No," she answered him, in a choked voice, "I have changed my mind. I
won't take these."

She was handling an unsurpassable necklace of big pearls.

He whispered to her.

"No," she said, curtly. "I won't look at any others. I think I'll go
home."

He was so amazed that he never saw me or, I think, anything or anybody
else in that shop just then. He escorted her out.

When I regained my self-possession enough to feel that I appeared at ease
and could trust myself to glance at the other customers as I should have
done had I been in fact what I was trying to appear, I was relieved to
find that not one of them was more than distantly known to me.

The idlers on the benches showed no inclination to rise and approach the
counter. Falco and I occupied the interval vacated by Clemens and Vedia.
Agathemer, of all men on earth, asked what he could do for us. Falco stood
there a long time, saw a goodly fraction of the finest jewels in
Orontides' possession and, manifestly, made as favorable impression of
connoisseurship on Agathemer as Agathemer made on him. They eyed each
other as fellow-adepts. Falco asked that he reserve an antique Babylonian
seal cut in sardonyx and promised to send a messenger with its price
before dark. Agathemer, who was passing under the name of Eucleides,
blandly replied that Orontides would prefer to send the seal to Falco's
residence. Falco agreed, of course, and to my unutterable relief we
finally departed.

Agathemer--Eucleides--brought the seal; and timed his arrival neatly as
Falco returned from the Baths of Titus just before dinner time. He was
giving a big formal dinner and my dinner was to be served in my apartment,
which had a tiny _triclinium_; being as lavishly appointed, and one in
which I was as luxuriously lodged and served, as those I had had in
Carthage and Utica.

I asked Agathemer if he could stay and dine with me and he accepted. We
had a wonderful dinner. The food, of course, was unsurpassable and our
appetites keyed up by our mutual emotions. When the dessert and wine were
brought in I dismissed the waiters, made sure that no man or boy of my
retinue was in my apartment and bolted its door.

Then we fell into each other's arms.

After we had expressed our mutual affection I told him my story from the
morning after the massacre and he told me his, which was commonplace.

He had easily escaped from the slave-convoy between Narnia and Intera