"I should feel perfectly happy here, Pollio," Berenice said one evening as she walked to and fro on the terrace with him, looking at the water in which the moonlight was reflected, bringing up into view the boats rowing here and there with pleasure parties with music and lanterns, "if it were not for the thought of Beric. It is curious that he should be mixed up with both our lives. He was my playmate as a boy; he saved me at the massacre of Camalodunum, and restored me to my father. When we left Britain he was fighting against Suetonius, and we expected when we left that the news of his defeat and death would reach Rome before us. At Rome we heard but vague rumours that Suetonius had not yet overcome the final resistance of the Britons, and glad we were when Petronius was sent out to take his place, and we heard that gentler measures were to be used towards the Britons. "Then, after a time, when we were in Syria, came the news that Suetonius had returned, bringing with him Beric, the British chief, with twenty of his followers, and my father at once wrote to the emperor praying him that clemency might be extended to him for his kind action in saving my life. Then when you came out to Syria Beric's name again came up. You had journeyed with him from Britain to Rome, and he had become your friend. Then a few months afterwards a newcomer from Rome brought us the story of how your cousin Ennia, having turned Christian, had been condemned to the lions; how a British gladiator named Beric had sprung into the arena and craved to fight the lion; how Nero had cruelly ordered him to do so unarmed; and how he had, as it seemed by a miracle, overcome the lion and bound him by strips torn from his mantle. Then again we learned from one who came from Nero's court that Beric stood high in favour with Caesar, that he was always about his person, and that rumours said he kept guard over him at night.