ome to flatter you. I came
because my father tells me you are a Roman beyond praise. I am a Roman.
I believe praise is worthless unless proven to the hilt--as for
instance: I have come to bare my thoughts to you, which is a bold
compliment in these days of treachery."

"Keep your thoughts under cover," said Pertinax, glancing at the steward
and the slaves who were beginning to carry in the meal. But he was
evidently pleased, and Sextus's next words pleased him more:

"I am ready to do more than think about you, I will follow where you
lead--except into licentiousness!"

He lay on both elbows and stared at the scene with disgust. Naked girls,
against a background of the torchlit water and the green and purple
gloom of cypresses, was nothing to complain of; statuary, since it could
not move, was not as pleasing to the eye; but shrieks of idiotic
laughter and debauchery of beauty sickened him.

There came a series of sounds at the pavilion entrance, where a litter
was set down on marble pavement and a eunuch's shrill voice criticized
the slow unrolling of a carpet.

"What did I warn you?" Norbanus whispered, laughing in Sextus's ear.

Pertinax got to his feet, long-leggedly statuesque, and strode toward
the antechamber on his right, whence presently he returned with a woman
on his arm, he stroking her hand as it rested on his. He introduced
Sextus and Norbanus; the others knew her; Galen greeted her with a
wrinkled grin that seemed to imply confidence.

"Now that Cornificia has come, not even Sextus need worry about our
behavior!" said Galen, and everybody except Sextus grinned. It was
notorious that Cornificia refined and restrained Pertinax, whereas his
lawful wife Flavia Titiana merely drove him to extremes.

This Roman Aspasia had an almost Grecian face, beneath a coiled
extravagance of dark brown hair. Her violet eyes were quietly
intelligent; her dress plain white and not elaborately fringed, with
hardly any jewelry. She cultivated modesty and all the older graces
that had grown unfashionable since the Emperor Marcus Aurelius died. In
all ways, in fact, she was the opposite of Flavia Titiana--it was hard
to tell whether from natural preference or because the contrast to his
wife's extremes of noisy gaiety and shameless license gave her a
stronger hold on Pertinax. Rome's readiest slanderers had nothing
scandalous to tell of Cornificia, whereas Flavia Titiana's inconstancies
were a by-word.

She