shall have it, although I must leave
Rome for the East within eight days and cannot despatch the imperative
business awaiting me, even if I could go without food, rest or sleep. I
mean what I say, you are to ask for a second audience if you really want
one and if you ask for one you shall have it. But do not ask for it unless
you must.

"And now, is there anything else you desire to say, or to request or any
query you wish to put to me? If so, I authorize and command you to speak."

Choking, I muttered that I had nothing further to say.

"In that case," said the Emperor, standing up, "this interview is at an
end. You shall be conducted to your conference with the present owner of
your former estates, which I hope may turn out to your full satisfaction."

And he clapped his hands for a page.

The page conducted me through endless corridors, twisting and turning.
During that brief interval I did a great deal of very confused thinking. I
was dazed and puzzled. I had realized as he ended his harangue that it
would have been ridiculous to ask that man to change his mind or even
modify a decision. He was not that sort of Emperor. Yet he had pledged
himself to restore to me my estates or recompense me in cash. I felt that
he meant it; yet I knew that he would never have uttered that pledge if he
had felt that there was the remotest chance of his ever being called on to
fulfill it. He was too parsimonious to promise such generosity unless
absolutely certain that the occasion for it would never confront him. Yet
how could he escape it and why did he feel so sure? How could any
beneficiary from such a grant of confiscated property be induced to
disgorge except by Imperial order and that with full compensation? Why had
Severus so sedulously, yet so obviously, avoided naming the present holder
of my former property? The Emperor was an austere man, stern by habit,
almost grim by nature, certainly serious. He had spoken seriously. Yet I
sensed a jest somewhere in the background of his thoughts. I almost
believed I had caught the glint of a twinkle in his hard, gray eyes. Could
I be wrong? Could I be right?

It seemed like a jest to send me to an interview with a beneficiary of a
grant of confiscated property, enriched thereby, and to imply, even to
suggest, that he might be induced to restore to me his acquisitions,
without pressure, merely by amicable converse. I conjured up before me the
probable appearance of the man I was to