It is a social convention. 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.
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