Melissa willingly obeyed him, and as he breathed more and more easily, she remembered that her mother’s headache had often been relieved when she had placed her hand on her forehead.  Caesar, now opening his eyes wide, and looking her full in the face, asked why she had not allowed him sooner to reap the benefit of this remedy.

Melissa slowly withdrew her hand, and with drooping eyes answered gently: 

“You are the emperor, a man. . . and I. . . .  But Caracalla interrupted her eagerly, and with a clear voice: 

“Not so, Melissa!  Do not you feel, like me, that something else draws us to one another, like what binds a man to his wife?-There lies the gem.  Look at it once again—­No, child, no!  This resemblance is not mere accident.  The short-sighted, might call it superstition or a vain illusion; I know better.  At least a portion of Alexander’s soul lives in this breast.  A hundred signs—­I will tell you about it later—­make it a certainty to me.  And yesterday morning. . . .  I see it all again before me. . . .  You stood above me, on the left, at a window. . .  I looked up; . . our eyes met, and I felt in the depths of my heart a strange emotion. . . .  I asked myself, silently, where I had seen that lovely face before.  And the answer rang, you have already often met her; you know her!”

“My face reminded you of the gem,” interrupted Melissa, disquieted.

“No, no,” continued Caesar.  “It was some thing else.  Why had none of my many gems ever reminded me before of living people?  Why did your picture, I know not how often, recur to my mind?  And you?  Only recollect what you have done for me.  How marvelously we were brought together!  And all this in the course of a single, short day.  And you also. . . .  I ask you, by all that is holy to you. . .  Did you, after you saw me in the court of sacrifice, not think of me so often and so vividly that it astonished you?”

“You are Caesar,” answered Melissa, with increasing anxiety.

“So you thought of my purple robes?” asked Caracalla, and his face clouded over; “or perhaps only of my power that might be fatal to your family?  I will know.  Speak the truth, girl, by the head of your father!”

Then Melissa poured forth this confession from her oppressed heart: 

“Yes, I could not help remembering you constantly, . . . and I never saw you in purple, but just as you had stood there on the steps; . . . and then—­ah!  I have told you already how sorry I was for your sufferings.  I felt as if . . . but how can I describe it truly?—­ as if you stood much nearer to me than the ruler of the world could to a poor, humble girl.  It was . . . eternal gods! . . .”

She stopped short; for she suddenly recollected anxiously that this confession might prove fatal to her.  The sentence about the time which should be fulfilled for each was ringing in her ears, and it seemed to her that she heard for the second time the lady Berenike’s warning.