"The night is yet young."

"Then I will tell you. Forgive me if I begin with things that seem dead
and gone; but they are not, for they live and work in me to this hour. I
know that you yourself did not choose me for your wife. Plotina chose me
for you--she loved you, whether your regard for her was for the beautiful
woman or for the wife of Caesar to whom everything belonged that you had
to look for--how should I know?"

"It was Plotina, the woman, that I honored and loved--"

"In choosing me she chose you a wife who was tall and so fitted to wear
the purple, but who was never beautiful. She knew me well and she knew
that I was less apt than any other woman to win hearts; in my parents'
house no child ever enjoyed so slender a share of the gifts of love, and
none can know better than you that my husband did not spoil me with
tenderness."

"I could repent of it at this moment."

"It would be too late now. But I will not be bitter--no, indeed I will
not. And yet if you are to understand me I must own that so long as I
was young I longed bitterly for the love which no one offered me."

"And you yourself have never loved?"

"No--but it pained me that I could not. In Plotina's apartments I often
saw the children of her relations, and many a time I tried to attract
them to me, but while they would play confidently with other women they
seemed to shun me. Soon I even grew cross to them--only our Verus, the