flowers, shone on the colored statuary and the Grecian paintings.

"What are all these women doing?" he demanded. There were girls, half-
hidden behind the statues, each one trying, as he passed her, to divine
his mood and to pose attractively.

"Where is Marcia? What will she do to me next? Is this some new scheme
of hers to keep me from enjoying my manhood? Send them away! The next
girl I catch in the corridor shall be well whipped. Where is Marcia?"

Throwing away his toga for a slave to catch and fold he turned between
gilded columns, through a bronze door, into the antechamber of the royal
suite. There a dozen gladiators greeted him as if he were the sun
shining out of the clouds after a month of rainy weather.

"This is better!" he exclaimed. "Ho, there, Narcissus! Ho, there,
Horatius! Ha! So you recover, Albinus? What a skull the man has! Not
many could take what I gave him and be on their feet again within the
week! You may follow me, Narcissus. But where is Marcia?"

Marcia called to him through the curtained door that led to the next
room--

"I am waiting, Commodus."

"By Jupiter, when she calls me Commodus it means an argument! Are some
more of her Christians in the carceres, I wonder? Or has some new
highwayman--By Juno's breasts, I tremble when she calls me Commodus!"

The gladiators laughed. He made a pass at one of them, tripped him,