For sixteen days after his interview with Aurelia, nothing happened, except that now he searched for Scaurus's watchers, and he took every precaution to give Scaurus no evidence of infidelity. There were furtive winks and covert grins among Scaurus's friends, and among his own; no doubt they had always been there to see, but he had closed his eyes to them. The worst of it was that he still wanted Dalmatica or loved her or was obsessed by her or all three. Julilla once more. The pain, the hatred, the hunger to lash out in any direction at anyone who got in his way. From a dream about making love to Dalmatica, he would pass in a flash to a dream about breaking her neck and seeing her dance insanely across a patch of moonlit grass in Circei no, no, that was how he had killed his stepmother! He began frequently to open the secret drawer in the cupboard which housed the mask of his ancestor Publius Cornelius Sulla Rufinus Flamen Dialis, take from it his little bottles of poisons and the box containing white foundry powder that was how he had killed Lucius Gavius Stichus and Hercules Atlas the strongman. Mushrooms? That was how he had killed his mistress eat these, Dalmatica! But time and experience had accumulated since Julilla died, and he knew himself better; he couldn't kill Dalmatica any more than he had been able to kill Julilla. With the women of noble and ancient houses, there was no other alternative than to see the business out to its last and bitterest flicker. One day some day he and Caecilia Metella Dalmatica would finish what he at this moment did not dare to start. Then Marcus Aemilius Scaurus came knocking on his door, that same door which had felt the hands of many ghosts, and oozed a drop of malice from out of its woody cells. The act of touching it contaminated Scaurus, who thought only that this interview was going to be even harder than he had envisioned.