"He will return the compliment and show us how to despise at wholesale,
eh? Marcia's life and yours and mine wouldn't be worth an hour's
purchase. The problem is, who shall warn Marcia? She grows intolerant
of friendly hints. I made her a present the other day of eight matched
German' litter-bearers--beauties--they cost a fortune--and I took the
opportunity to have a chat with her. She told me to go home and try to
manage my own wife! Friendly enough--she laughed--she meant no enmity;
but shrewd though she is, and far-seeing though she is, the wine of
influence is going to her head. You know what that portends. Few men,
and fewer women, can drink deeply of that wine and--"

"She comes," said Pertinax.

There was a stir near the bronze door leading to the women's disrobing
hall. Six women in a group were answering greetings, Marcia in their
midst, but no man in the Thermae looked at them a moment longer than was
necessary to return the wave of the hand with which Marcia greeted every
one before walking down the steps into the plunge. She did not even
wear the customary bracelet with its numbered metal disk; not even the
attendants at the Thermae would presume to lose the clothing of the
mistress of the emperor. Commodus, who at the age of twelve had flung a
slave into the furnace because the water was too hot, would have made
short work of any one who mislaid Marcia's apparel.

She did not belie her reputation. It was no wonder that the sculptors
claimed that every new Venus they turned out was Marcia's portrait. Her
beauty, as her toes touched water, was like that of Aphrodite rising
from the wave. The light from the dome shone golden on her brown hair
and her glossy skin. She was a thing of sensuous delight, incapable of