“Pertinax!” she said, shaking the parchment, speaking in a strained voice, “this is his final list!  He has copied the names from his tablets.  Whose name do you guess comes first?”

Pertinax was playing with Telamonion and did not look at her.

“Severus!” he answered, morbid jealousy, amounting to obsession, stirring that cynical hope in him.

“Severus isn’t mentioned.  The first six names are in this order:  Galen, Marcia, Cornificia, Pertinax, Narcissus, Sextus alias Maternus.  Do you realize what that means?  It is now or never!  Why has he put Galen first, I wonder?”

Galen did not appear startled.  His interest was philosophical—­ impersonal.

“I should be first.  I am guiltiest.  I taught him in his youth,” he remarked, smiling thinly.  “I taught him how to loose the beast that lives in him, not intending that, of course, but it is what we do that counts.  I should come first!  The state would have been better for the death of many a man whom I cured; but I did not cure Commodus, I revealed him to himself, and he fell in love with himself and—­”

“Now will you poison him?” said Marcia.

“No,” said Galen.  “Let him kill me.  It is better.”

“Gods!  Has Rome no iron left?  You, Pertinax!” said Marcia, “Go in and kill him!”

Pertinax stood up and stared at her.  The child Telamonion pressed close to him holding his righthand, gazing at Marcia.

“Telamonion, go in and play with Narcissus,” said Marcia.  She pointed at the curtains and the child obeyed.

“Go in and kill him, Pertinax!” Marcia shook the list of names, then stood still suddenly, like a woman frozen, ash-white under the carmine on her cheeks.

There came a voice from the emperor’s bedroom, more like the roar of an angry beast than human speech: 

“Marcia!  Do you hear me, Marcia?  By all Olympus—­Marcia!”

She opened the door.  The inner room was in darkness.  There came a gust of chill wet wind that made all the curtains flutter and there was a comfortless noise of cataracts of rain downpouring from the over-loaded gutters on to marble balconies.  Then the emperor’s voice again: 

“Is that you, Marcia?  You leave your Commodus to die of thirst!  I parch—­I have a fever—­bring my wine-cup!”

“At once, Commodus.”

She glanced at the golden cup on an onyx table.  On a stand beside it was an unpierced wine jar set in an enormous bowl of snow.  She looked at Pertinax—­and shrugged her shoulders, possibly because the wind blew through the opened door.  She glanced at Galen.

“If you have a fever, shouldn’t I bring Galen?”

“No!” roared Commodus.  “The man might poison me!  Bring me the cup, and you fill it yourself!  Make haste before I die of thirst!  Then bring me another lamp and dose the shutters!  No slaves—­I can’t bear the sight of them!”