ed anyway. Can you find the constellation of Antinous?"

Certainly. It's directly under Acquila." A brief vision of Ganymede being borne aloft by the eagle hovered in her mind. Whether the eagle had descended from the aegis of Zeus or the standard of the Emperor Hadrian, the story seemed basically unchanged.

Tony nodded solemnly at his sister's sagacity. "So when I told him that I was interested, he told me where to find the story of Antinous."

"And now you know all about it?"

Are you familiar with it?".

She nodded. Tony sighed and leaned back against the bookcase. "It's so fragmentary and so terribly dry. If I can get him to tell it to me, perhaps

he can make it more interesting."

She thought of the times he had brought her a book to read aloud, or begged her to tell him a story. Those were long, rainy days when she had taken a sober delight in playing the affectionate older sister.

"Oh, he can undoubtedly make it very spicy."

Retreating into herself, she passed her hand over the smooth, open surface of the book. Tony had called these histories dry, but she realized that the words were actually keys, precisely carved to unlock the imagination. And if the past ran deep in one's veins, how many echoes these terse syllables awakened in the blood. Domenica had a profound sense of the past, and knew that she had been reborn like the Phoenix from the ashes of her yesterday's self. It was an atavistic feeling that disclosed the real meaning of the history books. It was undoubtedly this same sense of the past, unconscious in Tony, but apparent in his every motion, that attracted Adrian to him. Adrian might be able to clarify the story of the Roman Emperor and his dark-starred favorite, but once he and Tony shared an equal knowledge, how much more Tony's racial intuition could appreciate it. Adrian was restless and detached, and she recognized in him the intense hunger of those who, with never more than partial success, use books as bricks to build a past.

"I've read so much that the room is out of focus," complained Tony, “I think I'll go out in the garden for a while."

She watched him as he left the library, and felt the pleasure of a connoisseur. Tony was the product of centuries of ordered, civilized breeding, and yet his peculiar charm lay in his unawareness of himself. Filled with an arid pride, she turned to the book that lay open on her lap.

After lunch, Domenica recognized the increasing tension of a pressure headache. She hated the thought of returning to her bedroom where she had wasted so much of the morning, but she knew that sleep was the only antidote for one of the few physical weaknesses that she could not subdue by force of will. Annoyed, she walked up the staircase, every step punctuated by a throb along the right side of her head. At the top of the stairs she met Tony emerging from his room.

"See what I found," he said, and held out a little music-box of inlaid wood. "That hasn't been in evidence for ages," remarked Domenica, swaying slightly under the renewed attacks of her headache.

"It won't play, though," Tony lifted the lid experimentally, listened unrewarded for a minute, and closed it again.

"Well, you have plenty of others." Nothing but the desire to lie down and rest her arm across her eyes seemed of any importance to her. "Besides, there's something perversely satisfying in a music-box that won't play."

Tony cocked his head to one side questioningly, then hit upon a solution. "Maybe Adrian can fix it. He works in a jewelry store."

"Excuse me," she explained as she brushed past him. "I have another of my damned headaches."

"I'm sorry." He watched her departure with concern.

She fell back on the pillows, her arm shielding her eyes from the light. It was impossible to hope for sleep, she thought, and clenched her teeth, But within five minutes, she found herself in the midst of a dream.

9