ve years old, whose face and bearing brought suddenly into
the fretful room a consciousness of a larger world, a more difficult
arena. Clodia smiled, and her beauty emerged like the argent moon
from sullen clouds. An extraordinary friendship existed between this
woman who was the bawd of every tongue in Rome, from Palatine to
Subura, and this man whose very name was unknown to nine-tenths of
his fellow-citizens and who could have passed unrecognised among
most of the aristocrats who knew his family or of the literary men
who had it from Cicero that he was at work on a _magnum opus_. Cicero
was Lucretius's only close friend, and supposed he had also read
every page of Clodia's life, but not even he guessed that a chance
conversation had originated a friendship which Clodia found unique
because it was sexless, and Lucretius because, within its barriers,
he dared display some of his vacillations of purpose. The woman who
was a prey of moods seemed to understand that when he chose science
as his mistress he had strangled a passion for poetry; and that when
he had determined to withdraw from the life of his day and generation
and to pursue, for humanity's sake, that Truth which alone is
immortal beyond the waxing and waning of nations, he had violated
a craving to consecrate his time to the immediate service of Rome.
And he, in his turn, who could penetrate beyond the flaming ramparts
of the world in his search for causes, had somehow discovered beyond
this woman's deadly fires a cold retreat of thought, where all things
were stripped naked of pretence.

Their intercourse was fitful and unconventional. Clodia was
accustomed to Lucretius's coming at unexpected hours with unexpected
demands upon her understanding. He even came, now and then, in those
strange moods which Cicero said made him wonder whether the gods had
confused neighbouring brews and ladled out madness when they meant
to dip from the vat of genius. At such times he might go as abruptly
as he came, leaving some wild sentence reechoing behind him. But at
all times they were amazingly frank with each other. So now Clodia's
eyes met his calmly enough as he said without any preface: "I have
come to answer your note. I prefer that my wife should keep out of
your circle. You used to have doves about you, who could protect a
wren, but they are fluttering away now and your own plumage is
appalling." With the phrase his eyes became conscious of her emeralds
and her shim