. I like
to believe that will prove true of you. I cannot give up Perilla long,
even with this young Roman as a hostage." The child had fallen asleep,
and with a light kiss on his tousled curls the grandfather turned
him over to his mother's arms. "Let us leave these connoisseurs to
discuss his dimples," he said to his son-in-law, "drag our other boy
out of his bee-hives and have one more game of ball before I get too
old."

Perilla watched the two men as they walked off toward the apiary,
and when she turned to her stepmother her eyes were wet with sudden
tears. "Fidus was almost impertinent to father, wasn't he? And father
was so perfect to him! That is what I tell Fidus, when he talks like
grandfather and says we are all going to the dogs--I tell him that
at least we are keeping our manners as we go, which is more than can
be said of the reformers. I am always nervous when he and father get
on to social questions, they feel so differently. Fidus was quite
angry with me the other day because I said I was thankful that we
had learned to have some appreciation of taste and good form and
elegance and that we should never go back to being boors and prudes.
He insisted that if by boors and prudes I meant men and women who
cared more for courage and virtue than for 'hypocrisy' and 'license,'
I should see them become the fashion again in Rome, before I knew
it. Augustus was not blindfolded, if he was old. But, although Fidus
doesn't understand father, he does love him. He said about coming
here that he would rather spend his last day with father than with
any other man in Rome. And what a happy day it has been!"

Perilla rose impulsively and, tucking her sleeping child in among
the cushions of a neighbouring bench, threw herself on the grass by
the older woman. Her forty-five years sat lightly upon Fabia, leaving
her still lovely in the sensitive eyes of her husband and
stepdaughter. A temperamental equableness and a disciplined
character gave to her finely modelled face an inward tranquillity
which was a refuge to their ardent natures. She only smiled now, as
Perilla's lively tongue began again: "How happy you make father all
the time! It keeps me from feeling too dreadfully about going off
to Africa. Do you know, when you first came to us, I had an idea you
wouldn't understand him! I was just old enough to realise that all
your traditions were very austere ones, that your family belonged
to the old order and had done wo