again." With these words Antinous hurried down the hill and through the
town to the Nile.

The moon had risen and was mirrored in the rough water. Just so had its
image played upon the waves when Antinous had rescued Selene from the
sea. The lad knew that Hadrian would be expecting him, still he did not
seek his tent. A violent emotion had overpowered him; he restlessly
paced up and down the river-bank rapidly reviewing in his memory the more
prominent incidents of his past life. He seemed to hear again every word
of the dialogue that had taken place yesterday between Hadrian and
himself. Before his inward eye he saw once more his humble home in
Bithynia, his mother, his brothers and sisters whom he should never see
again. Once more he lived through the dreadful hour when he had deceived
his beloved master and had been an incendiary. An overmastering dread
fell upon him as he thought of Hadrian's wish to put him in the place of
the man whom the prudent sovereign had chosen as his successor--a choice
that was perhaps the direct outcome of his own crime. He, Antinous, who
to-day could not think of the morrow, who always kept out of the way of
the discourse of grave men because he found it so hard to follow their
meaning, he who knew nothing but how to obey, he who was never happy but
alone with his master and his dreaming, far from the bustle of the world
--he, to be burdened with the purple, with anxiety, with a mountain-load
of responsibility!

No, no; the idea was unheard-of--impossible! And yet Hadrian never gave
up a wish he had once expressed in words. The future loomed before his
soul like some overpowering foe. Suffering, unrest, and misfortune
stared him in the face, turn which way he would.

What was the hideous fatality that threatened his sovereign? It was