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The clerk did not press the point further.

“You’d better get on with that index,” said the high official as Rufinus withdrew.

He told the result of his interview to his sporting friend, who started out by himself to the Hippodrome.

Rufinus settled down to his index. But he soon fell into a mood of abstraction. The races and the games did not interest him in the least. It was something else which attracted him. And, as he sat musing, the vision of the Hippodrome as he had last seen it rose clearly before him. He saw the seaweed-coloured marble; the glistening porticoes, adorned with the masterpieces of Greece, crowded with women in gemmed embroideries and men in white tunics hemmed with broad purple; he saw the Generals with their barbaric officers–Bulgarians, Persians, Arabs, Slavs–the long line of savage-looking prisoners in their chains, and the golden breastplates of the standard-bearers. He saw the immense silk velum floating in the azure air over that rippling sea of men, those hundreds of thousands who swarmed on the marble steps of the Hippodrome. He saw the Emperor in his high-pillared box, on his circular throne of dull gold, surrounded by slaves fanning him with jewel-coloured plumes, and fenced round with golden swords.

And opposite him, on the other side of the Stadium, the Empress, mantled in a stiff pontifical robe, laden with heavy embroidered stuffs, her little head framed like a portrait in a square crown of gold and diamonds, whence chains of emeralds hung down to her breast; motionless as an idol, impassive as a gilded mummy.

He saw the crowd of gorgeous women, grouped like Eastern flowers around her: he saw one woman. He saw one form as fresh as a lily of the valley, all white amidst that hard metallic splendour; frail as a dewy anemone, slender as the moist narcissus. He saw one face like the chalice of a rose, and amidst all those fiery jewels two large eyes as soft as dark violets. And the sumptuous Court, the plumes, the swords, the standards, the hot, vari-coloured crowd melted away and disappeared, so that when the Emperor rose and made the sign of the Cross over his people, first to the right, and then to the left, and thirdly over the half-circle behind him, and the singers of Saint Sofia and the Church of the Holy Apostles mingled their bass chant with the shrill trebles of the chorus of the Hippodrome, to the sound of silver organs, he thought that the great hymn of praise was rising to her and to her alone; and that men had come from the uttermost parts of the earth to pay homage to her, to sing her praise, to kneel to her–to her, the wondrous, the very beautiful: peerless, radiant, perfect.

A voice, followed by a cough, called from the hole in the wall; but Rufinus paid no heed, so deeply sunk was he in his vision.

“Rufinus, the Chief is calling you,” said Cephalus.

Rufinus started, and hurried to the hole in the wall. The Head of the Department gave him a message for an official in another department.

Rufinus hurried with the message downstairs and delivered it. On his way back he passed the main portico on the ground floor. He walked out into the street: it was empty. Everybody was at the games.

A dark-skinned country girl passed him singing a song about the swallow and the spring. She was bearing a basket full of anemones, violets, narcissi, wild roses, and lilies of the valley.

“Will you sell me your flowers?” he asked, and he held out a silver coin.

“You are welcome to them,” said the girl. “I do not need your money.”

He took the flowers and returned to the room upstairs. The flowers filled the stuffy place with an unwonted and wonderful fragrance.

Then he sat down and appeared to be once more busily engrossed in his index. But side by side with the index he had a small tablet, and on this, every now and then, he added or erased a word to a short poem. The sense of it was something like this:–

Rhodocleia, flowers of spring
I have woven in a ring;
Take this wreath, my offering, Rhodocleia.

Here’s the lily, here the rose
Her full chalice shall disclose;
Here’s narcissus wet with dew,
Windflower and the violet blue.
Wear the garland I have made;
Crowned with it, put pride away;
For the wreath that blooms must fade;
Thou thyself must fade some day, Rhodocleia.