thought how far apart they were.  Her prayers came easily, too, in this spot; the bonds that linked her to these beautiful marble beings were familiar and dear to her.  While she gazed up into the face of Asklepios, imploring him to be gracious to the imperial youth, and release him from the pain but for which he might have been humane and beneficent, the stony features seemed to live before her eyes, and the majesty and dignity that beamed on the brow assured her that the god’s power and wisdom were great enough to heal every disease.  The tender smile which played on his features filled her soul with the certainty that he would vouchsafe to be gracious; nay, she could believe that he moved those marble lips and promised to grant her prayer.  And when she turned to the statue of Hygeia she fancied the beautiful, kind face nodded to her with a pledge of fulfillment.

She raised her beseeching arms higher still, and addressed her sculptured friends aloud, as though they could hear her: 

“I know that nothing is hidden from you, eternal gods,” she began, “and when it was your will that my mother should be taken from me my foolish heart rebelled.  But I was then a child without understanding, and my soul lay as it were asleep.  Now it is different.  You know that I have learned to love a man; and many things, and, the certainty that the gods are good, have come to me with that love.  Forgive the maid the sins of the child, and make my lover whole, as he lies under the protection and in the sanctuary of the great Serapis, still needing your aid too.  He is mending, and the greatest of thy ministers, O Asklepios, says he will recover, so it must be true.  Yet without thee even the skill of Galenus is of little avail; wherefore I beseech you both, Heal Diodoros, whom I love!—­But I would fain entreat you for another.  You will wonder, perhaps—­for it is Bassianus Antoninus, whom they call Caracalla and Caesar.

“Thou, Asklepios, dost look in amazement, and great Hygeia shakes her head.  And it is hard to say what moves me, who love another, to pray for the blood-stained murderer for whom not another soul in his empire would say a word to you.  Nay, and I know not what it is.  Perhaps it is but pity; for he, who ought to be the happiest, is surely the most wretched man under the sun.  O great Asklepios, O bountiful and gracious Hygeia, ease his sufferings, which are indeed beyond endurance!  Nor shall you lack an offering.  I will dedicate a cock to you; and as the cock announces a new day, so perchance shall you grant to Caracalla the dawn of a new existence in better health.