Then the quarrel began again.  High above every other voice rose the shrill tones of a man who had just arrived from Carthage, and who boasted of personal friendship with the venerable Tertullian.  The listening girl could no longer follow the connection of the discussion, but the same names again met her ear; and, though she understood nothing of the matter, it annoyed her, because the turmoil disturbed her lover’s rest.

It was not till the sick-nurse came back that the tumult was appeased; for, as soon as she learned how seriously the loud disputes of her fellow-believers were disturbing the sick man’s rest, she interfered so effectually, that the house was as silent as before.

The deaconess Katharine was the name by which she was known, and in a few minutes she returned to her patient’s bedside.

Andreas followed her, with the leech, a man of middle height, whose shrewd and well-formed head, bald but for a little hair at the sides, was set on a somewhat ungainly body.  His sharp eyes looked hither and thither, and there was something jerky in his quick movements; still, their grave decisiveness made up for the lack of grace.  He paid no heed to the bystanders, but threw himself forward rather than bent over the patient, felt him, and with a light hand renewed his bandages; and then he looked round the room, examining it as curiously as though he proposed to take up his abode there, ending by fixing his prominent, round eyes on Melissa.  There was something so ruthlessly inquisitive in that look that it might, under other circumstances, have angered her.  However, as it was, she submitted to it, for she saw that it was shrewd, and she would have called the wisest physician on earth to her lover’s bedside if she had had the power.

When Ptolemaeus—­for so he was called—­had, in reply to the question, “who is that?” learned who she was, he hastily murmured:  “Then she can do nothing but harm here.  A man in a fever wants but one thing, and that is perfect quiet.”

And he beckoned Andreas to the window, and asked him shortly, “Has the girl any sense?”

“Plenty,” replied the freedman, decisively.

“As much, at any rate, as she can have at her age,” the other retorted.  “Then it is to be hoped that she will go without any leave-taking or tears.  That fine lad is in a bad way.  I have known all along what might do him good, but I dare not attempt it alone, and there is no one in Alexandria. . . .  But Galen has come to join Caesar.  If he, old as he is—­But it is not for the likes of us to intrude into Caesar’s quarters—­Still—­”

He paused, laying his hand on his brow, and rubbing it thoughtfully with his short middle finger.  Then he suddenly exclaimed:  “The old man would never come here.  But the Serapeum, where the sick lie awaiting divine or diabolical counsel in dreams—­Galen will go there.  If only we could carry the boy thither.”