f a
swallow, and might fly up into the face of the sun, until the earth
beneath her had vanished.

But while she leaned from the parapet by the window of the room,
footsteps sounded on the mosaic pavement without; the drapery in the
doorway was flung aside; Agias entered, and after him--another.

II

Drusus ran to Cornelia and caught her in his arms; and she--neither
fainted nor turned pale, but gave a little laugh, and cried softly:--

"I always knew you were coming!"

What more followed Agias did not know; his little affair with
Artemisia had taught him that his Hellenic inquisitiveness sometimes
would do more harm than good.

Very different from the good-humoured, careless, half-boyish student
youth who had driven down the Praeneste road two years before, was the
soldierly figure that Cornelia pressed to her heart. The campaigning
life had left its mark upon Drusus. Half of a little finger the stroke
of a Spanish sword had cleft away at Ilerda; across his forehead was
the broad scar left by the fight at Pharsalus, from a blow that he had
never felt in the heat of the battle. During the forced marchings and
voyages no razor had touched his cheeks, and he was thickly bearded.
But what cared Cornelia? Had not her ideal, her idol, gone forth into
the great world and stood its storm and stress, and fought in its
battles, and won due glory? Was he not alive, and safe, and in health
of mind and body after ten thousand had fallen around him? Were not
the clouds sped away, the lightnings ceased? And she? She was happy.

So Drusus told her of all that had befallen him since the day he
escaped out of Lucius Ahenobarbus's hands at Baiae. And Cornelia told
of her imprisonment at the villa, and how Demetrius had saved her, and
how it came to pass that she was here at the Egyptian court. In turn
Drusus related how Caesar had pursued Pompeius into Asia, and then,
hearing that the Magnus had fled to Egypt, placed two legions on
shipboard and sailed straight for Alexandria.

"And when he landed," continued the young officer, "the magistrates of
the city came to Caesar, and gave him first Pompeius's seal-ring of a
lion holding a sword in his paw, and then another black-faced and
black-hearted Egyptian, without noticing the distress the Imperator
was in, came up and uncovered something he had wrapped in a mantle. I
was beside the general when the bundle was unwrapped. I am sickened
when I speak of it. It was the head of Pomp