“You are Caesar,” answered Melissa, with increasing anxiety.

“So you thought of my purple robes?” asked Caracalla, and his face clouded over; “or perhaps only of my power that might be fatal to your family?  I will know.  Speak the truth, girl, by the head of your father!”

Then Melissa poured forth this confession from her oppressed heart: 

“Yes, I could not help remembering you constantly, . . . and I never saw you in purple, but just as you had stood there on the steps; . . . and then—­ah!  I have told you already how sorry I was for your sufferings.  I felt as if . . . but how can I describe it truly?—­as if you stood much nearer to me than the ruler of the world could to a poor, humble girl.  It was . . . eternal gods! . . .”

She stopped short; for she suddenly recollected anxiously that this confession might prove fatal to her.  The sentence about the time which should be fulfilled for each was ringing in her ears, and it seemed to her that she heard for the second time the lady Berenike’s warning.

But Caracalla allowed her no time to think; for he interrupted her, greatly pleased, with the cry: 

“It is true, then!  The immortals have wrought as great a miracle in you as in me.  We both owe them thanks, and I will show them how grateful I can be by rich sacrifices.  Our souls, which destiny had already once united, have met again.  That portion of the universal soul which of yore dwelt in Roxana, and now in you, Melissa, has also vanquished the pain which has embittered my life. . .  You have proved it!—­And now . . . it is beginning to throb again more violently—­now—­beloved and restored one, help me once more!”

Melissa perceived anxiously how the emperor’s face had flushed again during this last vehement speech, and at the same time the pain had again contracted his forehead and eyes.  And she obeyed his command, but this time only in shy submission.  When she found that he became quieter, and the movement of her hand once more did him good, she recovered her presence of mind.  She remembered how often the quiet application of her hand had helped her mother to sleep.

She therefore explained to Caracalla, in a low whisper directly he began to speak again, that her desire to give him relief would be vain if he did not keep his eyes and lips closed.  And Caracalla yielded, while her hand moved as lightly over the brow of the terrible man as when years ago it had soothed her mother to sleep.

When the sufferer, after a little time, murmured, with closed eyes

“Perhaps I could sleep,” she felt as if great happiness had befallen her.

She listened attentively to every breath, and looked as if spell-bound into his face, until she was quite sure that sleep had completely overcome Caesar.

She then crept gently on tiptoe to Philostratus, who had looked on in silent surprise at all that had passed between his sovereign and the girl.  He, who was always inclined to believe in any miraculous cure, of which so many had been wrought by his hero Apollonius, thought he had actually witnessed one, and gazed with an admiration bordering on awe at the young creature who appeared to him to be a gracious instrument of the gods.