e so weary and sad! There was
no good in it. He wanted simply to get you away from me! Let us hope
that Titus has got him for his museum by this time, and be at ease!"

She raised her head and reproach flashed through the meshes of her
veil.

"Momus is a good man," she said.

"He can not be," he insisted. "Have I not set forth his iniquities
even now?"

"It was a short task," she maintained. "But time is not long enough to
count his virtues."

"I can spend time better," he declared.

He saw her silken brows lower in a spirited frown and he was glad. She
was showing some other feeling than that dead level of unhappiness
that had possessed her from the first moment he had seen her. His was
not the heart contented to go astray after a tear. Men fall in search
of joy.

"Momus is carrying a burden under which more brilliant men would
falter," she averred. "I am beyond reckoning his debtor!"

"Since he has shifted that sweet burden for a time on my shoulders, I
will forgive him for his looks. If he will stay away, I'll be his
debtor further. But enough of Momus! I came to ask after your health,
when your long journey by night is done."

"I am well; we did not journey all night."

"Sit, I pray you. There is no need for you to stand with that air of
finality. I am not going, yet. I went back to your camp last night
within a short time after I left you and found the camp broken and
your fire lonely. I wanted to offer you my horse."

"We did not walk all night. We camped a little farther on, and moved
at daybreak this morning," she explained.

He cast a reflective look at the sun and considered how much time
Julian of Ephesus had lost for him upon the road, or else how long he
had slept, that this pair, who had camped all night and had journeyed
afoot by day, had caught up with him.

"Still it was a cruel journey--for those little feet," he said.

She glanced involuntarily at her sandals, worn and dusty.

"Yes," he said compassionately, following her eyes. "But let me see no
more, else I meet this good and burdened Momus with the flat of my
hand when he comes! What is he to you?"

"My servant--now almost my father!" she insisted, trying to cover the
tacit accusation that she had made in admitting by a glance that she
was weary. "He orders all things for my good. Do you think that each
of the stones over which I stumbled to-day did not hurt him worse
because they hurt me? Do you think he would have me go on, u