regular, and the prefect confessed to himself as he looked at Sabina's
face, marked as it was with minute wrinkles and touched up with red and
white, that the sculptor who a few years previously had been commissioned
to represent her as 'Venus Victrix' might very well have given the
goddess a certain amount of resemblance to the imperial model. If only
her eyes, which were absolutely bereft of lashes, had not been quite so
small and keen--in spite of the dark lines painted round them--and if
only the sinews in her throat had not stood out quite so conspicuously
from the flesh which formerly had covered them!

With a deep bow Titianus took the Empress's right hand, covered with
rings; but she withdrew it quickly from that of her husband's friend and
relative, as if she feared that the carefully-cherished limb--useless as
it was for any practical purpose, a mere toy among hands--might suffer
some injury, and wrapped it and her arm in her upper-robe. But she
returned the prefect's friendly greeting with all the warmth at her
command. Though formerly at Rome she had been accustomed to see Titianus
every day at her house, this was their first meeting in Alexandria; for
the previous day, exhausted by the sufferings of her sea-voyage, she had
been carried in a closed litter to the Caesareum, and this morning she
had declined to receive his visit, as her whole time was given up to her
physicians, bathing-women, and coiffeurs.

"How can you survive in this country?" she said in a low but harsh voice,
which always made the hearer feel that it was that of a dull, fractious,
childless woman. "At noon the sun burns you up, and in the evening it is
so cold--so intolerably cold!' As she spoke she drew her robe closer
round her, but Titianus, pointing to the stoves in the middle of the
hall, said: