stay--here comes the third hour,
at the beginning of which I was interrupted. Eternal gods! what have we
here?"

The Emperor held the wax tablet prepared by Aminonius at arm's length
from his eyes and never parted his lips again till he had come to the end
of the last hour of the night. Then he dropped the hand that held the
horoscope, saying with a shudder:

"A hideous destiny. Horace was right in saying the highest towers fall
with the greatest crash."

"The tower of which you speak," said Sabina, "is that darling of fortune
of whom you are afraid. Vouchsafe then to Verus a brief space of
happiness before the horrible end you foresee for him."

While she spoke Hadrian sat with his eyes thoughtfully fixed on the
ground, and then, standing in front of his wife, he replied:

"If no sinister catastrophe falls upon this man, the stars and the fate
of men have no more to do with one another than the sea with the heart of
the desert, than the throb of men's pulses with the pebbles in the brook.
If Ammonius has erred ten times over still more than ten signs remain on
this tablet, hostile and fatal to the praetor. I grieve for Verus--but
the state suffers with the sovereign's misfortunes.--This man can never
be my successor."

"No?" asked Sabina rising from her couch. "No? Not when you have seen
that your own star outlives his? Not though a glance at this tablet shows
you that when he is nothing but ashes the world will still continue long
to obey your nod?"

"Compose yourself and give me time.--Yes, I still say not even so."

"Not even so," repeated Sabina sullenly. Then, collecting herself, she
asked in a tone of vehement entreaty:

"Not even so--not even if I lift my hands to you in supplication and cry
in your face that you and Fate have grudged me the blessing, the
happiness, the crown and aim of a woman's life, and I must and I will
attain it; I must and I will once, if only for a short time, hear myself
called by some dear lips by the name which gives the veriest beggar-woman
with her infant in her arms preeminence above the Empress who has never
stood by a child's cradle. I must and I will, before I die, be a mother,
be called mother and be able to say, 'my child, my son--our son.'" And as
she spoke she sobbed aloud and covered her face with her hands.

The Emperor drew back a step from his wife. A miracle had been wrought
before his eyes. Sabina--in whose eyes no tear had ever been seen--Sabina
was weeping