arents
she was too young to mourn. The latter half of her life these gods
had crowned with a love which made her youth immortal. She had been
married when she was a mere girl to a young soldier who had not lived
long enough to obtrude upon her life more than a gentle memory of
his bravery. The bearing of a child had been the vital part of that
marriage, and the child had come into her new home with her, leaving
it only for a happy one of her own. Her husband's child had been like
a second daughter to her, and throughout the twenty years of her life
with Ovid joy had consistently outweighed all difficulties. Insolent
tongues had been busy with his faithlessness to her. But after the
first fears she had come to understand that, although other women
often touched the poet and artist in him, none save herself knew the
essential fidelity and the chivalrous tenderness of the husband. She
had accepted with pride his shining place in public regard. It was
no wonder that he loved Rome, for Rome loved him.

A nightingale broke into song among the rose bushes. Her face was
like a girl's as she thought of Ovid, with the grape leaves above
his vivid face, young as the gods are young, seeking her eyes with
his. A faint smell, as of homely things, rose from the familiar earth.
Lights began to appear in the windows of the villa. She had come to
this home when she and Ovid were married, and this morning she had
again offered her tranquil prayers to the Penates so long her own.
The happy years broke in upon her. Ah, yes, she and her husband had
the divine essence of youth within them. But they had something finer
too, something that comes only to middle age--the sense of security
and peace, the assurance that, except for death, no violent changes
lay ahead of them. She had only to nurture, as they faced old age
together, a happiness already in full measure theirs.

As she turned toward the house she met her husband, come himself to
seek her. In the recurrent springs of her after life the faint smell
of the burgeoning earth filled her with an unappeasable desire.

II

The next week Fidus and Perilla started for Libya, leaving the two
children with their grandfather rather than expose them to the
dangers of the African climate. Ovid and Fabia spent the summer as
usual in the cool Apennines at the old family homestead at Sulmo.
They lingered on into the autumn for the sake of the vintage, a
favourite season with them, and did not ret