Brinnaria, with a sharp intake of her breath, gazed about the room and collected herself to resume her argument and make her next point. “Do you concede,” she queried, “that I have the right to be solicitous about Almo’s life?” “Father said so,” Commodus replied, “and I never knew him to be wrong. I took that opinion from him and I see no reason to change it.” “Do you concede,” she pressed him, “that I have the right to looking forward to marrying him at the end of my service?” “Like Father, I do,” he admitted. “How can I ever marry him,” she demanded, “if he remains King of the Grove?” The young Emperor laughed merrily. “Don’t you worry about that, either,” he said. “I told you I’d do anything for you and I meant it. I told you I’d do anything for Almo, and I meant that too. But, as things are, doing what you want and what is good for him will be doing just what I most want myself. I have a frightfully poor memory. Barely seven years ago my Father triumphed after what was thought a complete, decisive and crushing victory over Avidius Cassius and a huge confederation of nomadic tribes. Cassius was certainly abolished; he was buried. But after scarcely five years the desert nomads were as active as ever and they have grown so pertinacious and cocky that something must be done. I don’t want to go myself, and I feel no confidence in my ability to accomplish anything if I went. I have been on the rack to decide whom to send. I can’t afford to send some bungler who’d mismanage and let the sand-hills devour a half a dozen of my best legions. “My councillors and I have found no promising candidate. All the while I have been cudgelling my brains trying to remember something Father told me. I distinctly recalled that he said that he had in view the very paragon of a commander to dispatch against Avidius, but that some occurrence made it impossible to send him and he had to go himself. I couldn’t for the life of me recollect what had happened to hinder the man going or what the man’s name was. Since it was a verbal communication from Father I had no memorandum and no one else had ever known it. “Now I remember that Almo was the man and that his infatuation with the life of a gladiator was what prevented.