Once only his eye caught a white-robed stately figure appearing in the doorway toward evening, a figure which instinct told him was the object of his passion.

He had to restrain himself, or he would have thrown off all concealment then and there, and snatched her away in his arms.

He saved himself that folly, but his quest seemed hopeless.

However weak the patrol in other parts of the city, there was always an ample watch around the Atrium Vestae.
Gabinius saw that his stay around Rome was only likely to bring him into the clutches of the law, and reluctantly he started back, by a night journey in a stolen wagon, for the safer hill country beyond the Anio.

But he was not utterly cast down.