"Galen," she said, "either you will do this or--I have been your friend.
Now be you mine! It is too risky to send one of my slaves to fetch a
poison. You are to come tonight and bring the poison with you.
Otherwise--you understand?"

"You are extremely comprehensible!" said Galen, pursing up his lips.

"You will obey?"

"I must," said Galen. But he did not say whether he would obey her or
his inclination. Pertinax, eyeing him doubtfully, seemed torn between
suspicion of him and respect for long-tried friendship.

"May we depend on you?" he asked. He laid a hand on Galen's shoulder,
bending over him.

"I am an old man," Galen answered. "In any event I have not long to
live. I will do my best--for you."

Pertinax nodded, but there was still a question in his mind. He bade
farewell to Marcia, turning his back toward Galen. Marcia whispered:

"Be a man now, Pertinax! If we should lose this main, we two can drink
the stuff that Galen brings."

"There was a falling star last night," said Pertinax. "Whose was it?"

Marcia studied his face a moment. Then:

"There will be a rising sun tomorrow!" she retorted. "Whose will it be?
Yours! Play the man!"

XI. GALEN

Galen's house was one he rented from a freedman of the emperor--a wise
means of retaining favor at the palace. Landlords having influence were
careful to protect good tenants. Furthermore, whoever rented, rather
than possessed, escaped more easily from persecution. Galen, like
Tyanan Apollonius, reduced his private needs, maintaining that
philosophy went hand in hand with medicine, but wealth with neither.

It was a pleasant little house, not far away from Cornificia's, within a
precinct that was rebuilt after all that part of Rome burned under
Nero's fascinated gaze. The street was crescent-shaped, not often
crowded, though a score of passages like wheel-spokes led to it; and to
the rear of Galen's house was a veritable maze of alleys. There were
two gates to the house: one wide, with decorated posts, that faced the
crescent street, where Galen's oldest slave sat on a stool and blinked
at passers-by; the other narrow, leading from a little high-walled
courtyard at the rear into an alley between stables in which milch-asses
were kept. That alley led into another where a dozen midwives had their
names and claims to excellency painted on the doors--an alley carefully
to be avoided, because women of that trade, like barbers