curious to see what sort of a sugarplum face, turned
out by the dozen, he will stick on my torso--which will please me, at any
rate, for a couple of days. Find me a good model for the bust of the
Sappho I am to restore. A thousand gadflies are buzzing in my brain--I am
so tremendously excited! What I am planning now will come to something!'"

Balbilla, as she spoke the last words, tried to mimic a man's deep voice,
and seeing the Empress smile she went on eagerly.

"It all came out so fresh, from a heart full to bursting of happy
vigorous creative joy, that it quite fired me, and we all went up to the
screen and begged the sculptor to let us see his work."

"And you found?" asked Sabina.

"He positively refused to let us into his retreat," replied the praetor;
"but Balbilla coaxed the permission out of him, and the tall young fellow
seems to have really learnt something. The fall of the drapery that
covers the Muse's figure is perfectly thought out with reference to
possibility--rich, broadly handled, and at the same time of surprising
delicacy. Urania has drawn her mantle closely round her, as if to protect
herself from the keen night-air while gazing at the stars. When he has
finished his Muse, he is to repair some mutilated busts of women; he was
fixing the head of a finished Berenice to-day, and I proposed to him to
take Balbilla as the model for his Sappho."

"A good idea" said the Empress. "If the bust is successful I will take
him with me to Rome."

"I will sit to him with pleasure," said the girl. "The bright young
fellow took my fancy."

"And Balbilla his," added the praetor's wife; he gazed at her as a
marvel, and she promised him that, with your permission, she would place
her face at his disposal for three hours to-morrow."

"He begins with the head," interposed Verus. "What a happy man is an
artist such as he! He may turn about her head, or lay her peplum in folds
without reproof or repulse, and to-day when we had to get past bogs of
plaster, and lakes of wet paint, she scarcely picked up the hem of her
dress, and never once allowed me--who would so willingly have supported
her--to lift her over the worst places."

Balbilla reddened and said angrily:

"Really Verus, in good earnest, I will not allow you to speak to me in
that way, so now you know it once for all; I have so little liking for
what is not clean that I find it quite easy to avoid it without
assistance."

"You are too severe," inte