The emperor’s breathing was scarcely perceptible, and how nobly cut was the profile which she could see, the other side of his face leaning on the pillow!  Had she any real reason to fear his awakening?  Perhaps he was quite unlike what Berenike thought him to be.  She remembered the sympathy she had felt for him when they had first met, and, in spite of all the trouble she had experienced since, she no longer felt afraid.  A thought then occurred to her which was sufficient excuse for disturbing the sick man’s sleep.  If she delayed it, she would be making him guilty of a fresh crime by allowing two blameless men to perish in misery.  But she would first convince herself whether the time was pressing.  She looked out through the open window at the stars and across the open place lying at her feet.  The third hour after midnight was past, and the sun would rise before long.

Down below all was quiet.  Macrinus, the praetorian prefect, on hearing that the emperor had fallen into a refreshing sleep, in order that he might not be disturbed, had forbidden all loud signals, and ordered the camp to be closed to all the inhabitants of the city; so the girl heard nothing but the regular footsteps of the sentries and the shrieks of the owls returning to their nests in the roof of the Serapeum.  The wind from the sea drove the clouds before it across the sky, and the plain covered with tents resembled a sea tossed into high white waves.  The camp had been reduced during the afternoon; for Caracalla had carried out his threat of that morning by quartering a portion of the picked troops in the houses of the richest Alexandrians.

Melissa, bending far out, looked toward the north.  The sea-breeze blew her hair into her face.  Perhaps on the ocean whence it came the high waves would, in a few hours, be tossing the ship on which her father and brother, seated at the oar, would be toiling as disgraced galley-slaves.  That must not, could not be!

Hark! what was that?

She heard a light whisper.  In spite of strict orders, a loving couple were passing below.  The wife of the centurion Martialis, who had been separated for some time from her husband, had at his entreaty come secretly from Ranopus, where she had charge of Seleukus’s villa, to see him, as his services prevented his going so far away.  They now stood whispering and making love in the shadow of the temple.  Melissa could not hear what they said, yet it reminded her of the sacred night hour when she confessed her love to Diodoros.  She felt as if she were standing by his bedside, and his faithful eyes met hers.  She would not, for all that was best in the world, have awakened him yesterday at the Christian’s house, though the awakening would have brought her fresh promises of love; and yet she was on the point of robbing another of his only cure, the sleep the gods had sent him.  But then she loved Diodoros, and what was Caesar to her?