nd desired the driver to show him the way. At the corner of
the next street, he met two litters, carried with difficulty through the
crowd by their bearers. In the first sat Keraunus, whose saffron-colored
cloak was conspicuous from afar, as fat as Silenus the companion of
Dionysus, but looking very sullen. In the second sat Arsinoe, looking
gaily about her, and so fresh and pretty that the Roman's easily-stirred
pulses beat more rapidly.

Without reflecting, he took the flowers from the hand of the
garden-god--the flowers intended for Selene--laid them on the girl's
litter, and said:

"Alexander greets Roxana, the fairest of the fair." Arsinoe colored,
and Verus, after watching her for some time as she was carried onwards,
desired one of his boys to follow her litter, and to join him again in
the flower-market, where he would wait, to inform him whither she had
gone.

The messenger hurried off, and Verus, turning his ass's head soon
reached a semicircular pillared hall on the shady side of a large open
space, under which the better sort of gardeners and flower dealers
of the city exposed their gay and fragrant wares to be sold by pretty
girls. To-day every stall had been particularly well supplied, but the
demand for wreaths and flowers had steadily increased from an early
hour, and although Verus had all that he could find of fresh flowers
arranged and tied together, still the nosegay, though much larger, was
not half so beautiful as that intended for Selene, and for which he
substituted it.

Now this annoyed the Roman. His sense of justice prompted him to make
good the loss he had inflicted on the sick girl. Gay ribbons were wound
round the stalks of the flowers, and the long ends floated in the air,
so Verus took a brooch from his dress and stuck it into the bow which
ornamented the stem of the nosegay; then he was satisfied, and as he
looked at the stone set in a gold border--an onyx on which was engraved
Eros sharpening his arrows--he pictured to himself the pleasure, the
delight of the girl that the handsome Bithynian loved, as she received
the beautiful gift.

His slaves, natives of Britain, who were dressed as garden-gods, were
charged with the commission to proceed to dame Hannah's under the
guidance of the donkey-driver to deliver the nosegay to Selene from
'the friend at Lochias,' and then to wait for him outside the house
of Titianus, the prefect; for thither, as he had ascertained from his
swift-foo