“Would you for their sakes be able to make up your mind to face bitter humiliation, nay, perhaps imminent danger?”

“Anything!  I would give my life for them!” replied the girl, with spirit, and her eyes gleamed with such enthusiastic self-sacrifice that his heart, though no longer young, warmed under their glow, and the principle to which he had sternly adhered since he had been near the imperial person, never to address a word to the sovereign but in reply, was blown to the winds.

Holding her hand in his, with a keen look into her eyes, he went on: 

“And if you were required to do a thing from which many a man even would recoil—­you would venture?”

And again the answer was a ready “Yes.”  Philostratus released her hand, and said: 

“Then we will dare the worst.  I will smooth the way for you, and to-morrow—­do not start—­tomorrow you yourself, under my protection, shall appeal to Caesar.”

The color faded from the girl’s cheeks, which had been flushed with fresh hopes, and her counselor had just expressed his wish to talk the matter over with the lady Berenike, when she came into the room.  She was now dressed in mourning, and her pale, beautiful face showed the traces of the tears she had just shed.  The dark shadows which, when they surround a woman’s eyes, betray past storms of grief, as the halo round the moon—­the eye of night—­gives warning of storms to come, were deeper than ever; and when her sorrowful gaze fell on Melissa, the girl felt an almost irresistible longing to throw herself into her arms and weep on her motherly bosom.

Philostratus, too, was deeply touched by the appearance of this mother, who possessed so much, but for whom everything dearest to a woman’s heart had been destroyed by a cruel stroke of Fate.  He was glad to be able to tell her that he hoped to soften Caesar.  Still, his plan was a bold one; Caracalla had been deeply offended by the scornful tone of the attacks on him, and Melissa’s brother was perhaps the only one of the scoffers who had been taken.  The crime of the Alexandrian wits could not be left unpunished.  For such a desperate case only desperate remedies could avail; he therefore ventured to propose to conduct Melissa into Caesar’s presence, that she might appeal to his clemency.

The matron started as though a scorpion had stung her.  In great agitation, she threw her arm round the girl as if to shelter her from imminent danger, and Melissa, seeking help, laid her head on that kind breast.  Berenike was reminded, by the scent that rose up from the girl’s hair, of the hours when her own child had thus fondly clung to her.  Her motherly heart had found a new object to love, and exclaiming, “Impossible!” she clasped Melissa more closely.

But Philostratus begged to be heard.  Any plea urged by a third person he declared would only be the ruin of the rash mediator.