litters and chariots, followed by crowds of slaves on foot with the
provisions for moonlight banquets, poured toward the northern gate, some
overtaking and passing the three but riding wide of the skewbald
Cappadocian stallion's heels.

"If Pertinax should really come," said Sextus.

"He will have a girl with him," Norbanus interrupted. He had an
annoying way of finishing the sentences that other folk began.

"True. When he is not campaigning Pertinax finds a woman irresistible."

"And naturally, also, none resists a general in the field!" Norbanus
added. "So our handsome Pertinax performs his vows to Aphrodite with a
constancy that the goddess rewards by forever putting lovely women in
his way! Whereas Stoics like you, Sextus, and unfortunates like me, who
don't know how to amuse a woman, are made notorious by one least lapse
from our austerity. The handsome, dissolute ones have all the luck. The
roisterers at Daphne will invent such scandalous tales of us tonight as
will pursue us for a lustrum, and yet there isn't a chance in a thousand
that we shall even enjoy ourselves!"

"Yes. I wish now we had chosen any other meeting place than Daphne,"
Sextus answered gloomily. "What odds? Had we gone into the desert
Pertinax would have brought his own last desperate adorer, and a couple
more to bore us while he makes himself ridiculous. Strange--that a man
so firm in war and wise in government should lose his head the moment a
woman smiles at him."

"He doesn't lose his head--much," Sextus answered. "But his father was