But not the less amazing, although a fact.
One not only cannot scrutinize a woman, one cannot scrutinize a group of women, even at a distance, even all the way across a swimming pool.

So, hoping to encounter Vedia in the gathering, I yet could not look for her.
I had met and talked with many of my acquaintances, notably Marcus Martius and his bride Marcia.
Marcia, rosy as the inside of a sea-shell, with her gold hair confined by a net of gold wire, was a bewitching creature, if I had been able to let my eyes dwell on her.
She was as contained and slow spoken and soft-voiced as always, but she was, for her, notably complimentary as to my share in the two fights; thanked me warmly for defending her, declared that she would certainly have been carried off, either as Xantha or Greia, or as a hostage for one or the other, if I had not fought "like both the Dioscuri at once," as she phrased it.
Martius corroborated her opinion of my services to them and thanked me warmly.
Delayed by chats with friends and acquaintances, held up by distant acquaintances and even by persons hardly known to me by sight, who congratulated me on the Emperor's public championing of me against my powerful Sabine neighbors, I felt my strength ebbing and sometimes saw a gray blur between my eyes and what I looked at.
I was, in fact, so weak that I nearly fainted when, unseen in the swarm of bathers until he was close to me, I encountered Talponius Pulto, tall, handsome, disdainful, sneering and malignant as usual.

From his proximity I escaped as unobtrusively as I could and as promptly.
The cold douche and a swim in the cold pool had revived me.

Also, in the cold pool I had encountered Nemestronia, still personable enough at eighty-odd to mingle daily with her social world, as nude as they, and enjoy herself thoroughly.

Yet, at her age, she knew she looked better when under water, and spent most of her time in the pools.