to hatred, and that is pity; it was with the eager compassion of a woman’s heart that Melissa marked every movement of the imperial murderer, as soon as she recognized his sufferings, and when their eyes had met.  Nothing now escaped her keen glance which could add to her sympathy for the man she had loathed but a minute before.  She noticed a slight limp in his gait and a convulsive twitching of his eyelids; his slender, almost transparent hand, she reflected, was that of a sick man, and pain and fever, no doubt, had thinned his hair, which had left many places bald.

And when the high—­priest of Serapis and the augurs met him at the bottom of the steps and Caesar’s eye again put on the cruel scowl of yesterday, she would not doubt that it was stern self-command which gave him that threatening glare, to seem terrible, in spite of his anguish, to those whose obedience he required.  He had really needed his companion’s support as they descended the stair, that she could plainly see; and she had observed, too, how carefully his guide had striven to conceal the fact that he was upholding him; but the courtier was too tall to achieve the task he had set himself.  Now, she was much shorter than Caesar, and she was strong, too.  Her arm would have afforded him a much better support.

But how could she think of such a thing?—­she, the sister of Alexander, the betrothed of Diodoros, whom she truly loved!

Caesar mingled with the priests, and her guide told her that the corridor was now free.  She peeped into the litter, and, seeing that Diodoros still slept, she followed him, lost in thought, and giving short and heedless answers to Andreas and the physicians She had not listened to the priest’s information, and scarcely turned her head to look out, when a tall, thin man with a bullet-head and deeply wrinkled brow was pointed out to her as Macrinus, the prefect of the body-guard, the most powerful man in Rome next to Caesar; and then the “friends” of Caracalla, whom she had seen yesterday, and the historian Dion Cassius, with other senators and members of the imperial train.

Now, as they made their way through halls and passages where the foot of the uninitiated rarely intruded, she looked about her with more interest when the priest drew her attention to some particularly fine statue or picture, or some symbolical presentment.  Even now, however, though association with her brothers had made her particularly alive to everything that was beautiful or curious, she glanced round with less interest than she otherwise might have done, for she had much else to think of.  In the first place, of the benefits Diodoros was to derive from the great Galen; then of her father, who this day must dispense with her assistance; and, finally, of the state of mind of her grave brother Philip.  He and Alexander, who usually were such united friends, now both were in love with Agatha, and what could come of that?  And from time to time her thoughts flew back to Caesar, and she felt as though some tie, she knew not what, linked them together.