no pleasure, and
many a time he felt as though it was not worth while to stir a limb or
draw a breath. Almost everything he saw was indifferent to him excepting
a kind word from the lips of the Emperor, whom he regarded as great
above all other men, whom he feared as Destiny incarnate, and to whom he
felt himself bound as intimately as the flower to the tree, the blossom
that must die when the stem is broken, on which it flaunts as an
ornament and a grace.

But, to-day, as he flung himself on the divan his visions took a new
direction. He could not help thinking of the pale girl whom he had saved
from the jaws of the blood-hound--of the white cold hand which for an
instant had clung to his neck--of the cold words with which she had
afterwards repelled him.

Antinous began to long violently to see Selene. That same Antinous,
to whom in all the cities he had visited with the Emperor, and in Rome
particularly, the noble fair ones had sent branches of flowers and
tender letters, and who nevertheless, since the day when he left his
home, had never felt for any woman or girl half so tender a sentiment,
as for the hunter the Emperor had given him, or for the big dog. This
girl stood before his memory like breathing marble. Perchance the man
might be doomed to death who should rest on her cold breast, but such a
death must be full of ecstasy, and it seemed to him that it would be far
more blissful to die with the blood frozen in his veins, than of the too
rapid throbbing of his heart.

"Selene," he murmured, now and again, with soft hesitation; a strange
unrest foreign to his calm nature seemed to propagate itself through all
his limbs, and he who commonly would be stretched on a couch for hours
without stirring, lost in dreams, now sprang up and paced the room,
sighing deeply, and with long strides.

It was a passionate longing for Selene that drove him up and down, and
his wish to see her again crystallized into resolve, and prompted him
to contrive the ways and means of meeting her once more before the
Emperor's return.

Simply to invade her father's lodging without farther ceremony, seemed
to him out of the question, and yet he was certain of finding her there,
since her injured foot would of course keep her at home. Should he once
more go to the steward with a request for bread and salt? But he dared
not ask anything of Keraunus in Hadrian's name after the scene which had
so recently taken place. Should he go there