And so they rode to Daphne full pelt, greatly to the anger of the too
well dressed Antiochenes, who cursed them for the mud they splashed from
wayside pools and for the dung and dust they kicked up into plucked and
penciled faces.

II. A CONFERENCE AT DAPHNE

It was not yet dusk. The sun shone on the bronze roof of the temple of
Apollo, making such a contrast to, and harmony with, marble and the
green of giant cypresses as only music can suggest. The dying breeze
stirred hardly a ripple on the winding ponds, so marble columns, trees
and statuary were reflected amid shadows of the swans in water tinted by
the colors of the sinking sun. There was a murmur of wind in the tops
of the trees and a stirring of linen-clad girls near the temple
entrance--voices droning from the near-by booths behind the shrubbery--
one flute, like the plaint of Orpheus summoning Eurydice--a blossom-
scented air and an enfolding mystery of silence.

Pertinax, the governor of Rome, had merely hinted at Olympian desire,
whereat some rich Antiochenes, long privileged, had been ejected with
scant ceremony from a small marble pavilion on an islet, formed by a
branch of the River Ladon that had been guided twenty years ago by
Hadrian's engineers in curves of exquisitely studied beauty. From
between Corinthian columns was a view of nearly all the temple precincts
and of the lawns where revelers would presently forget restraint. The
first night of the Daphne season usually was the wildest night of all
the year, but they began demurely, and for the present there was the
restraint of expectation.

Because there was yet snow on mountain-tops and the balmy air would
carry a suggestion of a chill at sunset, there were cunningly wrought
charcoal braziers set near the gilded couches, grouped around a
semicircular low table so as to give each guest an unobstructed view
from the pavilion. Pertinax--neither guest nor host, but a god, as it
were, who had arrived and permitted the city of Antioch to ennoble
itself by paying his expenses--stretched his long length on the middle
couch, with Galen the physician on his right hand, Sextus on his left.
Beyond Galen lay Tarquinius Divius and Sulpicius Glabrio, friends of
Pertinax; and on Sextus' left was Norbanus, and beyond him Marcus Fabius
a young tribune on Pertinax' staff. There was only one couch
unoccupied.

Galen was an older man than Pertinax, who was already graying at the
temples. Galen