o Ichomachus, Xenophon's perfect wife-educator," the
ex-pirate had said to his importunate cousin; "wait a few years."

And Agias was fain to be content, with this hope before him.

There were other partings than his; but at last the adieus were over,
and all save Caesar went back upon the quay. The Imperator alone
tarried on the poop of the vessel for an instant. His features were
half wistful as he held Drusus by the hand, but his eyes were kindly
as ever to the young man.

"Ah, amice!" he said, "we who play at philosophy may not know all the
time that there are gods, but at all times we know that there is the
most godlike of divine attributes--love undefiled. Therefore let us
hope, for we see little, and the cosmos is past finding out."

He sprang back on to the quay. The musicians on the bow struck up with
pipe and lyre; the friends on the pier flung aboard the last garlands
of rose and lily and scented thyme; the rowers bent to their task; the
one hundred and seventy blades--pumiced white--smote the yellow waves
of the harbour, and the ship sped away. Cornelia, Fabia, and Drusus
stood on the poop gazing toward the receding quay. Long after they had
ceased to recognize forms and faces they stared backward, until the
pier itself was a speck, and the great buildings of the city grew dim.
Then they passed the Pharos, and the land dwindled more and more into
a narrow, dark ribbon betwixt blue water and bluer sky. The long
swells of the open sea caught the trireme, and she rode gallantly over
them--while the music still played, and her hardy crew, pirates no
longer, but pardoned men,--seamen, employees of the honest merchant
Demetrius,--sent the good ship bounding faster and faster, as they
pressed their strength against the springing oars. Higher and higher
rose the column of foam around the cutwater; louder and louder sang
the foam under the stern, as they swept it past. The distant land
faded to a thread, to a line, was gone; and to north and south and
east and west were but the water and the cloudless ether. Fabia,
Cornelia, and Drusus said little for a long time. Their eyes wandered,
sometimes, over the track of the foam, and in their minds they saw
again the water-birds plashing among lotus plants, and heard the
ancient Egyptian litanies softly chanted behind the propylons of a
temple built by some king two thousand years departed. But oftener
their eyes ran ahead over the prow, and they walked again across the