Ah! I see the marriage-cake: the bridegroom presents the fire and water." Then, in a longer pause, was heard the chorus, Thalassie! Thalassie! and for just a few moments, in the strange light of many wax tapers at noonday, Marius could see them both, side by side, while the bride was lifted over the doorstep: Lucius Verus heated and handsome--the pale, impassive Lucilla looking very long and slender, in her closely folded yellow veil, and high nuptial crown.
As Marius turned away, glad to escape from the pressure of the crowd, he found himself face to face with Cornelius, an infrequent spectator on occasions such as this.

It was a relief to depart with him--so fresh and quiet he looked, though in all his splendid equestrian array in honour of the ceremony--from the garish heat [232] of the marriage scene.

The reserve which had puzzled Marius so much on his first day in Rome, was but an instance of many, to him wholly unaccountable, avoidances alike of things and persons, which must certainly mean that an intimate companionship would cost him something in the way of seemingly indifferent amusements.

Some inward standard Marius seemed to detect there (though wholly unable to estimate its nature) of distinction, selection, refusal, amid the various elements of the fervid and corrupt life across which they were moving together:--some secret, constraining motive, ever on the alert at eye and ear, which carried him through Rome as under a charm, so that Marius could not but think of that figure of the white bird in the market-place as undoubtedly made true of him.

And Marius was still full of admiration for this companion, who had known how to make himself very pleasant to him.