It was he! she saw him! In her eyes he was everything in physique and virile beauty that a maiden of the Republic could desire! The bitterness and waiting of months were worth the blessedness of the instant.

Cornelia never knew what Drusus said to her, or what she said to him.

She only knew that he was holding her in his strong arms and gazing into her eyes; while the hearts of both talked to one another so fast that they had neither time nor need for words.

They were happy, happy! Long it was before their utterance passed beyond the merest words of endearment; longer still before they were composed enough for Cornelia to listen to Drusus while he gave his own account of Mamercus's heroic resistance to Dumnorix's gang at Praeneste; and told of his own visit to Ravenna, of his intense admiration for the proconsul of the two Gauls; and of how he had come to Puteoli and opened communications with Cassandra, through Cappadox, the trusty body-servant who in the guise of a fisherman was waiting in the boat below.
"And as Homer puts it, so with us," cried Cornelia, at length: "'And so the pair had joy in happy love, and joyed in talking too, and each relating; she, the royal lady, what she had endured at home, watching the wasteful throng of suitors; and he, high-born Odysseus, what miseries he brought on other men, and bore himself in anguish;--all he told, and she was glad to hear.'" So laughed Cornelia when all their stories were finished, likening their reunion to that of the son of Laertes and the long-faithful Penelope.
"How long were Penelope and Odysseus asunder ?" quoth Drusus.
"Twenty years." "_Vah!_ We have not been sundered twenty months or one-third as many.
How shall we make the time fly more rapidly ?" "I know not," said Cornelia, for the first time looking down and sighing, "a lifetime seems very long; but lifetimes will pass.

I shall be an old woman in a few years; and my hair will be all grey, and you won't love me." "_Eho_," cried Drusus, "do you think I love you for your hair ?" "I don't know," replied Cornelia, shaking her head, "I am afraid so.
What is there in me more than any other woman that you should love; except--" and here she raised her face half-seriously, half in play--"I am very beautiful?
Ah! if I were a man, I would have something else to be loved for; I would have eloquence, or strength, or power of command, or wisdom in philosophy.