Caesar sank back again on the pillows, moved his dry lips, and glanced toward the drink which Galen had prescribed for him; and Melissa, who almost as a child had long nursed a dear invalid, guessed what he wanted, brought him the goblet, and gave him a draught.

Caracalla rewarded her with a grateful look.  But the physic only seemed to increase the pain.  He lay there panting and motionless, until, trying to find a new position, he groaned, lightly: 

“It is as if iron was being hammered here.  One would think others might hear it.”

At the same time he seized the girl’s hand and placed it on his burning brow.

Melissa felt the pulse in the sufferer’s temple throbbing hard and short against her fingers, as she had her mother’s when she laid her cool hand on her aching forehead; and then, moved by the wish to comfort and heal, she let her right hand rest over the sick man’s eyes.  As soon as she felt one hand was hot, she put the other in its place; and it must have relieved the patient, for his moans ceased by degrees, and he finally said, gratefully: 

“What good that does me!  You are—­I knew you would help me.  It is already quite quiet in my brain.  Once more your hand, dear girl!”

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?”