y, and kneading and pinching like a practised modeller,
wiping off and pressing on, he formed a woman's face with a towering
structure of curls, which resembled Balbilla, but which reproduced every
conspicuous peculiarity with such whimsical exaggeration that Pollux
could not contain his delight. When at last Hadrian stepped back from
the happy caricature and called upon him to say whether that were not
indeed the Roman lady, Pollux exclaimed:

"It is as surely she, as you are not merely a great architect, but
an admirable sculptor. The thing is coarse, but unmistakably
characteristic."

The Emperor himself seemed to enjoy his artistic joke hugely, for he
looked at it, and laughed again and again. Pontius, however, seemed
to view it differently; he had listened with eager sympathy to the
conversation between Hadrian and the sculptor, and had watched the
former as he began his work; but as it went on he turned away, for
he hated that distortion of fine forms, which he often found that the
Egyptians took a special delight in. It was positively painful to him to
see a graceful, highly-gifted and defenceless creature, to whom, too, he
felt himself bound by ties of gratitude, mocked at in this way by such a
man as Hadrian. He had only to-day met Balbilla for the first time, but
he had heard from Titianus that she was staying at the Caesareum
with the Empress, and the prefect had also told him that she was the
granddaughter of that same governor, Claudius Balbillus, who had granted
freedom to his own grandfather, a learned Greek slave.

He had met her with grateful sympathy and devotion; her bright and
lively nature had delighted him, and at each thoughtless word she
uttered he would have liked to give her some warning sign, as though
she were near to him through some tie of blood, or some old established
friendship that might warrant his right to do so. The defiant, half
gallant way in which Verus, the dissipated lady-killer, had spoken to
her had enraged him and filled him with anxiety, and long after the
illustrious visitors had left Lochias he had thought of her again and
again, and had resolved, if it were possible, to keep a watchful eye on
the descendant of the benefactor of his family. He felt it as a sacred
duty to shelter and protect her, seeming to him as she did, an airy,
pretty, defenceless song-bird.

The Emperor's caricature had the same effect on his feelings as though
some one had insulted and scorned, be