The high-sounding words flowed with dramatic emphasis, the sentimental speaker adding to their impressiveness by the action of his hands, till it was more than the invalid could bear.  With a pinched smile, he raised himself with difficulty, and interrupted Theocritus with the impatient exclamation, “Still the actor!”

“Yes, still!” retorted the favorite, in a hard voice.  “You, however, have been even longer—­what you have, indeed, been too long—­Prefect of Egypt!” With an angry fling he threw the corner of his toga over his shoulder, and, though his hand shook with rage, the pliant drapery fell in graceful folds over his athletic limbs.  He turned his back on the prefect, and, with the air of a general who has just been crowned with laurels, he stalked through the anteroom and past Philip once more.

The philosopher had told his sister all this in a few sentences.  He now paused in his walk to and fro to answer Melissa’s question as to whether this upstart’s influence were really great enough to turn so noble and worthy a man out of his office.

“Can you ask?” said Philip.  “Titianus had no doubts from the first; and what I heard in the Serapeum—­but all in good time.  The prefect was sorry for my father and Alexander, but ended by saying that he himself needed an intercessor; for, if it were not to-day, at any rate to-morrow, the actor would inveigle Caesar into signing his death-warrant.”

“Impossible!” cried the girl, spreading out her hands in horror; but Philip dropped into a seat, saying: 

“Listen to the end.  There was evidently nothing to be hoped for from Titianus.  He is, no doubt, a brave man, but there is a touch of the actor in him too.  He is a Stoic; and where would be the point of that, if a man could not appear to look on approaching death as calmly as on taking a bath?

“Titianus plays his part well.  However, I next went to the Serapeum—­it is a long way, and it was very hot in the sun—­to ask for help from my old patron, the high-priest.  Caesar is now his guest; and the prefect, too, had advised me to place my father’s cause in his hands.”

Here Philip sprang up again, and rushed up and down, sometimes stopping for a moment in front of his sister while he went on with his story.

Theocritus had long since reached the Serapeum in his swift chariot when the philosopher at last arrived there on foot.  He was well known as a frequent visitor, and was shown at once into the hall of that part of his abode which Timotheus had reserved for himself when he had given up all the best rooms to his imperial visitor.

The anteroom was crowded, and before he got any farther he heard that the favorite’s accusations had already led to serious results, and rumors were rife concerning the luckless witticisms of some heedless youth, which would bring grief upon the peaceable citizens.  But before he could ask what was meant, he was admitted to the high-priest’s room.