He had more to say, but Marcia’s scorn interrupted him.  Galen chuckled.

“Rome!  He cares only for Bultius Livius.  It is now or never, Pertinax!”

Marcia’s intense emotion made her appear icily indifferent, but she did not deceive Galen, although Pertinax welcomed her calmness as excusing unenthusiasm in herself.

“Marcia is right,” said Galen.  “It is now or never.  Marcia ought to know Commodus!”

“Know him?” she exploded.  “I can tell you step by step what he will do!  He will come out of the bath and eat a light meal, but he will drink nothing, for fear of poison.  Presently he will be thirsty and lonely, and will send for me; and whatever he feels, he will pretend he loves me.  When the raging fear is on him he will never drink from any one but me.  He will take a cup of wine from my hands, making me taste it first.  Then he will go alone into his own room, where only that child Telamonion will dare to follow.  Everything depends then on the child.  If the child should happen to amuse him he will turn sentimental and I will dare to go in and talk to him.  If not—­”

Galen interrupted.

“Madness,” he said, “resembles many other maladies, there being symptoms frequently for many years before the slow fire bursts into a blaze.  Some die before the outbreak, being burned up by the generating process, which is like a slow fire.  But if they survive until the explosion, it is more violent the longer it has been delayed.  And in the case of Commodus that means that other men will die.  And women,” he added, looking straight at Marcia.

“If he even pretends he loves me—­I am a woman,” said Marcia.  “I love him in spite of his frenzies.  If I only had myself to think of—­”

“Think then!” Galen interrupted.  “If you can’t think for yourself, do you expect to benefit the world by thinking?”

Marcia buried her face in her hands and lay face downward on the couch.  She was trembling in a struggle for self-mastery.  Pertinax chewed at his finger-nails, which were the everlasting subject of his proud wife’s indignation; he never kept his fine hands properly; the peasant in him thought such refinements effeminate, unsoldierly.  Cornificia, who could have made him submit even to a manicure, understood him too well to insist.

“Galen!” said Marcia, sitting up suddenly.

The old man blinked.  He recognized decision sudden and irrevocable.  He clenched his fingers and his lower lip came forward by the fraction of an inch.

“I must save my Christians.  What do you know about poisons?” she demanded.

“Less than many people,” Galen answered.  “I have studied antidotes.  I am a doctor.  Those I poisoned thought as I did, that I gave them something for their health.  My methods have changed with experience.  Doctoring is like statesmanship—­which is to say, groping in the dark through mazes of misinformation.”