ng of
Veranilda, my best Basil? Having found her, having made her your own,
will it be easier than now to take your chance of death or of
captivity? When was a Roman wont to let his country's good wait upon
his amorous desire?'

They were on the Sacred Way, between the Basilica of Constantine and
the Atrium of Vesta. Struck to the heart by his friend's words, words
such as Marcian had never yet addressed to him, Basil stood mute and
let his eyes wander: he gazed at the Forum, at the temples beyond it,
at the Capitol with its desecrated sanctuary of Jupiter towering above.
Here, where the citizens once thronged about their business and their
pleasure, only a few idlers were in view, a few peasants with carts,
and a drove of bullocks just come in from the country.

'You would have me forget her?' he said at length, in a voice
distressfully subdued.

'I spoke only as I thought.'

'And your thought condemned me--despised me, Marcian?'

'Not so. Pitied you rather, as one whose noble nature has fallen into
trammels. Have you not long known, O Basil, how I think of the thing
called love?'

'Because you have never known it!' exclaimed Basil. 'My love is my
life. Having lost Veranilda, I have lost myself; without her I can do
nothing. Were she dead I could fling myself into the struggle with our
enemies, all the fiercer because I should care not whether I lived or
died; but to lose her thus, to know that she may be in Rome, longing
for me as I for her--to think that we may never hold each other's hands
again--oh, it tears my heart, and makes me weak as a child. You cannot
understand me; you have never loved!'

'May such knowledge be far from me!' said Marcian, with unwonted
vehemence. 'Do you feel no shame in being so subdued to the flesh?'

'Shame? Shame in the thought that I love Veranilda?'

Marcian seemed to make an effort to control a passion that wrought in
him; he was paler than of wont, and, instead of the familiar irony, a
cold, if not cruel, austerity appeared in his eyes and on his lips. He
shunned Basil's astonished gaze.

'Let us not speak of this,' broke from him impatiently. 'You understand
me as little as I you. Forgive me, Basil--I have been talking idly--I
scarce know what I said. It is sometimes thus with me. Something takes
hold upon me, and I speak at random. Come, come, dear friend of my
heart, we will find your Veranilda; trust me, we will.'

Three days went by, then Basil was summoned again