e tinged with the charm of Hellenic beauty,
that the Charites kissed him at his birth, and though, by the stern laws
of virtue we must condemn him, he deserves to be crowned with praise and
garlands from the point of view of the feeling for beauty."

"Oh! for the artist who wants a model he is a choice morsel."

"The Athenian judges acquitted Phryne because she was beautiful."

"They did wrong."

"Hardly in the eyes of the gods, whose fairest works must deserve our
respect."

"Still poison may be kept in the most beautiful vessels."

"And yet body and soul always to a certain extent correspond."

"And can you dare to call the handsome Verus the admirable Verus?"

"No, but the reckless Lucius Aurelius Verus is at the same time the
gayest and pleasantest of all the Romans, free alike from spite or
carefulness, he troubles himself with no doctrines of virtue, and as
when a thing pleases him, he desires to possess it, he endeavors to give
pleasure to every one else."

"He has wasted his pains so far as I am concerned."

"I do as he wishes."

The last words both of the philologer and the sophist were spoken
somewhat louder than was usual in the presence of the Empress. Sabina,
who had just told the praetor which residence her husband had decided
on inhabiting, drew up her shoulders and pinched her lips as if in pain,
while Verus turned a face of indignation--a face which was manly in
spite of all the delicacy and regularity of the features--on the
two speakers, and his fine bright eyes caught the hostile glance of
Apollonius.

An intimation of aversion to his person was one of the things which
to him were past endurance; he hastily passed his hand through his
blue-black hair, which was only slightly grizzled at the temples and
flowed uncurled, but in soft waving locks round his head, and said,
not heeding Sabina's question as to his opinion of her husband's latest
instructions:

"He is a repulsive fellow, that wrangling logician; he has an evil eye
that threatens mischief to us all, and his trumpet voice cannot hurt you
more than it does me. Must we endure him at table with us every day?"

"So Hadrian desires."

"Then I shall start for Rome," said Verus decidedly. "My wife wants to
be back with her children, and as praetor, it is more fitting that I
should stay by the Tiber than by the Nile."

The words were spoken as lightly as though they were nothing more than
a proposition to go to supper, but they se