He was singing now; the weird melody penetrated even to the corridor.

"What a strange song!" said Aurelius Lucanus, cutting a piece of
tender chicken, roasted on a spit before an open fire in the kitchen
so tiny that there was scarcely room for the cook and his attendants
to move about. Yet here, they prepared the elaborate dinners, served
with the utmost nicety, in which Romans delighted. "It is different
from anything I ever heard."

Two men were carrying around the table huge platters of food. One was
Alyrus, the Moor, who was not only a porter, but a general factotum.
His duties were many and various, from sweeping the floors and keeping
their highly-colored mosaics clear and shining, to accompanying his
master to business, as he had done this morning, and assisting the man
who served at table. He was sent, also, with Virgilia when she went to
pay a visit to some of her friends, or when, in former times, she went
to see one of the Vestal Virgins, and worshipped at the shrine. There
had been some talk of her taking the vows of the Vestals, who held a
very high position in Rome, but both her father and mother felt that,
as an only daughter, she could not be spared from home, Marcella, one
of her companions, had always entered as a novice. In all her
seventeen years of life, Virgilia had never been alone outside of her
father's house. It was not the custom for young girls to go upon the
streets unaccompanied. Even when she paid a visit, Alyrus or one of
the other slaves was waiting in the ante-chamber, to obey her lightest
call.

The other slave, who followed Alyrus with a glass carafe of iced
water, was named Alexis. He was a Greek, from near Ephesus, seized as