And the high-priest opened the door with his own hand.

“I hurried home,” Philip added, “and if I forgot, in my dismay at this fresh disaster, to warn Glaukias to be careful—­But, no, no!  It is unpardonable!—­Alexander is by this time crossing the lake, perhaps.  I am like Caracalla—­my brother’s murderer!”

But Melissa laid her arm on his shoulder and besought the poor fellow to be comforted; and her loving words of excuse seemed to have some good effect.  But why was he always so reserved?  Why could not Philip be as frank with her as Alexander was?  She had never been very near to him; and now he was concealing from her something which moved him deeply.

She turned away sadly, for she could not even comfort him.  But then again Philip sighed from the bottom of his heart, and she could contain her self no longer.  More tenderly than she had ever addressed him before, she besought her brother to open his heart to her.  She would gladly help him to endure what oppressed him; and she could understand, for she herself had learned what the joys and sorrows of love were.

She had found the right clew.  Philip nodded, and answered gloomily: 

“Well, then, listen.  It may do me good to speak.”  And thereupon he began to tell her what she had already heard from Alexander; and, covering her tingling cheeks with her hands, she listened with breathless attention, not missing a word, though the question rose to her mind again and again whether she should tell him the whole truth, which he as yet could not know, or whether it would be better to spare his already burdened soul.

He described his love in glowing colors.  Korinna’s heart, he said, must have gone forth to him; for, at their last meeting on the northern shore of the lake, her hand had rested in his while he helped her out of the boat; he could still feel the touch of her fingers.  Nor had the meeting been pure accident, for he had since seen and recognized the presence on earth of her departed soul in her apparently living form.  And she, too, with the subtle senses of a disembodied spirit, must have had a yearning towards him, for she had perceived all the depth and fervor of his passion.  Alexander had given him this certainty; for when he had seen Korinna by the lake, her soul had long since abandoned its earthly tenement.  Before that, her mortal part was already beyond his reach; and yet he was happy, for the spirit was not lost to him.  Only last night magic forces had brought her before him—­his father, too, had been present, and no deception was possible.  He had gone to bed in rapturous excitement, full of delicious hopes, and Korinna had at once appeared to him in a dream, so lovely, so kind, and at the same time so subtle a vision, ready to follow him in his thoughts and strivings.  But just as he had heard a full assurance of her love from her own lips, and was asking her by what name he should call her when the craving to see her again should wax strong in him, old Dido had waked him, to cast him out of elysium into the deepest earthly woes.