For an instant they stood by their intended victims, as if
debating whether to murder them only for murder's sake, when the
appearance of two women, stealthily quitting a house farther on in the
street, carrying a basket covered by some tattered garments, attracted
their attention. They turned instantly to follow the bearers of the
basket, and again Ulpius and Antonina were left alone on the river's
bank.
The appearance of the assassins had been powerless, as every other sight
or event in the city, in arousing the faculties of Ulpius. He had
neither looked on them nor fled from them when they surrounded him; but
now when they were gone he slowly turned his head in the direction by
which they had departed. His gaze wandered over the wet flagstones of
the street, over two corpses stretched on them at a little distance,
over the figure of a female slave who lay forsaken near the wall of one
of the houses, exerting her last energies to drink from the turbid rain-
water which ran down the kennel by her side; and still his eyes remained
unregardful of all that they encountered.
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