The nearer they got to her own home, the more lightly her heart beat.  She had none but good news to report there.  The old woman, panting for breath, was obliged to beg her to consider her sixty years and moderate her pace.

Melissa willingly checked her steps; and when, at the end of the street of Hermes, they reached the temple of the god from whom it was named and turned off to the right, the good woman parted from her, for in this quiet neighborhood she could safely be trusted to take care of herself.

Melissa was now alone.  On her left lay the gardens of Hermes, where, on the southern side, stood her father’s house and that of their neighbor Skopas.  Though the old nurse had indeed talked of nothing that was not pleasant, it was a comfort not to have to listen to her, but to be free to follow her own thoughts.  Nor did she meet with anything to distract them, for at this hour the great public garden was left almost entirely to children and their attendants, or to the inhabitants of the immediate neighborhood who frequented the temples of Hermes or Artemis, or the little shrine of Asklepios, which stood in a grove of mimosas on the skirt of the park, and to which Melissa herself felt attracted.  It had been a familiar spot at the time when her mother was at the worst.  How often had she flown hither from her home near at hand to pour oil on the altar of the god of healing—­to make some small offering and find comfort in prayer!

The day was now hot, she was tired, and, when she saw the white marble columns gleaming among the greenery, she yielded to the impulse to enjoy a few minutes’ rest in the cool cella and accomplish the vow she had taken an hour or two since.  She longed, indeed, to get home, that her father might share the happiness which uplifted her heart; but then she reflected that she would not soon have the opportunity of carrying out, unobserved, the purpose she had in her mind.  Now, if ever, was the time to offer sacrifice for Caesar and for the mitigation of his sufferings.  The thought that Galenus perhaps was right, and that of Caracalla’s myriad subjects she might be the only one who would do so much for his sake, strengthened her resolve.

The chief temple of Asklepios, whom the Egyptians called Imhotep, was at the Serapeum.  Imhotep was the son of Ptah, who, at Alexandria, was merged in Serapis.  There he was worshiped, conjointly with Serapis and Isis, by Egyptians, Greeks, and Syrians alike.  The little sanctuary near her father’s house was the resort of none but Greeks.  Ptolemaeus Philadelphus, the second Macedonian King of Egypt, had built it as an appendage to the Temple of Artemis, after the recovery from sickness of his wife Arsinoe.

It was small, but a masterpiece of Greek art, and the statues of Sleep and of A Dream, at the entrance, with the marble group behind the altar, representing Asklepios with his sister Hygeia and his wife Epione the Soother, was reckoned by connoisseurs as among the noblest and most noteworthy works of art in Alexandria.