of suitors; and he, high-born Odysseus, what
miseries he brought on other men, and bore himself in anguish;--all he
told, and she was glad to hear.'"

So laughed Cornelia when all their stories were finished, likening
their reunion to that of the son of Laertes and the long-faithful
Penelope.

"How long were Penelope and Odysseus asunder?" quoth Drusus.

"Twenty years."

"_Vah!_ We have not been sundered twenty months or one-third as many.
How shall we make the time fly more rapidly?"

"I know not," said Cornelia, for the first time looking down and
sighing, "a lifetime seems very long; but lifetimes will pass. I shall
be an old woman in a few years; and my hair will be all grey, and you
won't love me."

"_Eho_," cried Drusus, "do you think I love you for your hair?"

"I don't know," replied Cornelia, shaking her head, "I am afraid so.
What is there in me more than any other woman that you should love;
except--" and here she raised her face half-seriously, half in
play--"I am very beautiful? Ah! if I were a man, I would have
something else to be loved for; I would have eloquence, or strength,
or power of command, or wisdom in philosophy. But no, I can be loved
for only two things; an ignoble or a poor man would take me if I were
hideous as Atropos, for I am noble, and, if my uncle were an honest
guardian, rich. But you need not regard these at all, so--" and she
brushed her face across Drusus's cheek, touching it with her hair.

"O Cornelia," cried the young man, out of the fulness of his heart,
"we must not waste this precious time asking why we love each other.
Love each other we do as long as we view the sun. O carissima! we
cannot trust ourselves to look too deeply into the whys and wherefores
of things. We men and women are so ignorant! We know nothing. What is
all our philosophy--words! What is all our state religion--empty form!
What is all our life--a dream, mostly evil, that comes out of the
eternal unconscious sleep and into that unconscious sleep will return!
And yet not all a dream; for when I feel your hands in mine I know
that I am not dreaming--for dreamers feel nothing so delicious as
this! Not long ago I recalled what old Artabanus said to King Xerxes
when the millions of Persia passed in review before their lord at
Abydos, 'Short as our time is, death, through the wretchedness of our
life, is the most sweet refuge of our race; and God, who gives us
tastes that we enjoy of pleasant times, is s