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