She could not help thinking of the time when she could fall asleep on her mother’s bosom in the certainty that tender love was watching over her.  The happiness of childhood, when she loved everything she knew-her family, the slaves, her father’s birds, the flowers in the little garden, the altar of the goddess to whom she made offering, the very stars in the sky-seemed to come over her, and there she sat in dreamy lassitude, her head on her lover’s shoulder, till the last stragglers of the procession, who, were women, many of them carrying little lamps in their hands, had almost all gone past.

Then she suddenly felt an eager jerk in the shoulder on which her head was resting.

“Look—­look there!” he whispered; and as her eyes followed the direction of his finger, she too started, and exclaimed, “Korinna!—­Did you know her?”

“She had often come to my father’s garden,” he replied, “and I saw her portrait in Alexander’s room.  These are souls from Hades that we have seen.  We must offer sacrifice, for those to whom they show themselves they draw after them.”  At this Melissa, too, shuddered, and exclaimed in horror:  “O Diodoros, not to death!  We will ask the priests to-morrow morning what sacrifice may redeem us.  Anything rather than the grave and the darkness of Hades!—­Come, I am strong again now.  Let us get away from hence and go home.”

“But we must go through the gate now,” replied the youth.  “It is not well to follow in the footsteps of the dead.”

Melissa, however, insisted on going on through the street.  Terrified as she was of the nether world and the disembodied souls, she would on no account risk falling into the hands of the horrible Egyptian, who might compel her to betray her brother’s hiding-place; and Diodoros, who was ashamed to show her the fears which still possessed him, did as she desired.

But it was a comfort to him in this horror of death, which had come over him now for the first time in his life, to kiss the maid once more, and hold her warm hand in his as they walked on; while the strange chant of the nocturnal procession still rang in her ears, and now and then the words recurred to her mind which she had heard in the house where the departed souls had gathered together: 

“The fullness of the time was come.”

Did this refer to the hour when the dead came to the end of their life on earth; or was there some great event impending on the city and its inhabitants, for which the time had now come?  Had the words anything to do with Caesar’s visit?  Had the dead come back to life to witness the scenes which they saw approaching with eyes clearer than those of mortals?

And then she remembered Korinna, whose fair, pale face had been strangely lighted up by the lamp she carried; and, again, the Magian’s assurance that the souls of the departed were endowed with every faculty possessed by the living, and that “those who knew” could see them and converse with them.