But she had seized the lamp and was examining his injury—a flesh wound that, while it had bled freely, yet seemed to have avoided the larger muscles and blood-vessels.
"Did I not tell you?" he said reassuringly, as she rose from her knee. "A close bandage so that it will not bleed—that is all we shall want, for my strength must remain with me yet a little while, if we would truly go to Rome and not to the realms of the dead."
She said nothing, but, tearing strips from her stole, proceeded deftly to bind them around the leg.
"Agathocles himself could not do better—nay, I doubt Aesculapius—" but she rose again quickly and placed her finger upon his lips.
"It is the gods who have saved us to each other. Do not make them angry, lest they withdraw their favour. I am ready to follow you, my lord Lucius."
Standing erect, he raised both hands in invocation.
"A shrine to Venus the Preserver!—to Apollo the Healer!"
Then, stooping quickly, he drew the long, dark robe of Iddilcar from where it lay entangled about the legs of the corpse. Fortunately it had slipped down from the Carthaginian's shoulders early in the struggle; perhaps he had tried to free himself from it; perhaps it had been partly torn away; but, in either event, it had fallen where it must have hampered his movements even more seriously, and where it was less stained with his blood than might have been expected.
Sergius threw it over his own tattered, blood-stained garments, striving to hide the rents, and raising it high about his neck so as to conceal his face as much as possible. Meanwhile, Marcia, having bound on her sandals, had of her own accord donned the mantle Iddilcar had brought for her, and which had fallen by the door of the apartment. Then, gathering up her long, thick hair, she confined it close above her head, drawing down upon it the hat that lay beside the cloak—a broad-brimmed Greek petasus, admirably adapted for concealment as well as protection.
"I am ready," she said eagerly. "Let us make haste."