The master of the house would not be able to share it, and while the two women sat opposite one another, saying little, and scarcely touching either food or drink, Philostratus was announced.

He came as messenger from Caracalla, who wished to speak to Melissa.

“At this hour?  Never, never!  It is impossible!” exclaimed Euryale, who was usually so calm; but Philostratus declared, nevertheless, that denial was useless.  The emperor was suffering particularly severely, and begged to remind Melissa of her promise to serve him gladly if he required her.  Her presence, he assured Euryale, would do the sick man good, and he guaranteed that, so long as Caesar was tormented by this unbearable pain, the young woman had nothing to fear.

Melissa, who had risen from her seat when the philosopher had entered, exclaimed: 

“I am not afraid, and will go with you gladly—­”

“Quite right, child,” answered Philostratus, affectionately.  Euryale, however, found it difficult to keep back her tears while she stroked the girl’s hair and arranged the folds of her garment.  When at last she said good-by to Melissa and was embracing her, she was reminded of the farewell she had taken, many years ago, of a Christian friend before she was led away by the lictors to martyrdom in the circus.  Finally, she whispered something in the philosopher’s ear, and received from him the promise to return with Melissa as soon as possible.

Philostratus was, in fact, quite easy.  Just before, Caracalla’s helpless glance had met his sympathizing gaze, and the suffering Caesar had said nothing to him but: 

“O Philostratus, I am in such pain!” and these words still rang in the ears of this warm-hearted man.

While he was endeavoring to comfort the emperor, Caesar’s eyes had fallen on the gem, and he asked to see it.  He gazed at it attentively for some time, and when he returned it to the philosopher he had ordered him to fetch the prototype of Roxana.

Closely enveloped in the veil which Euryale had placed on her head, Melissa passed from room to room, keeping near to the philosopher.

Wherever she appeared she heard murmuring and whispering that troubled her, and tittering followed her from several of the rooms as she left them; even from the large hall where the emperor’s friends awaited his orders in numbers, she heard a loud laugh that frightened and annoyed her.

She no longer felt as unconstrained as she had been that morning when she had come before Caesar.  She knew that she would have to be on her guard; that anything, even the worst, might be expected from him.  But as Philostratus described to her, on the way, how terribly the unfortunate man suffered, her tender heart was again drawn to him, to whom—­as she now felt—­she was bound by an indefinable tie.  She, if any one, as she repeated to herself, was able to help him; and her desire to put the truth of this conviction to the proof—­for she could only regard it as too amazing to be grounded in fact—­was seconded by the less disinterested hope that, while attending on the sufferer, she might find an opportunity of effecting the release of her father and brother.