locks, "as if I especially needed to conceal what is covered by my hair."

"Even the Lesbian swan was called the fair-haired," replied Florus.

"And you are our Sappho," said the praetor's wife, drawing the girl's arm
to her bosom.

"Really! and will you not write in verse all that you have seen to-day?"
asked the Empress.

Balbilla looked down on the ground a minute and then said brightly: "It
might inspire me, everything strange that I meet with prompts me to write
verse."

"But follow the counsel of Apollonius the philologer," advised Florus.
"You are the Sappho of our day, and therefore you should write in the
ancient Aeolian dialect and not Attic Greek." Verus laughed, and the
Empress, who never was strongly moved to laughter, gave a short sharp
giggle, but Balbilla said eagerly:

"Do you think that I could not acquire it and do so? To-morrow morning
I will begin to practise myself in the old Aeolian forms."

"Let it alone," said Domitia Lucilla; "your simplest songs are always the
prettiest."

"No one shall laugh at me!" declared Balbilla pertinaciously. "In a few
weeks I will know how to use the Aeolian dialect, for I can do anything
I am determined to do--anything, anything."