To-day, as yesterday, he expressed his thanks to Melissa, but he found her changed.  She looked timidly and anxiously down into her lap excepting when she replied to a direct question; and yet he had done everything to please her.  Her relations would soon be free and in Alexandria once more, and Zminis was in prison, chained hand and foot.  This he told her; and, though she was glad, it was not enough to restore the calm cheerfulness he had loved to see in her.

He urged her, with warm insistence, to tell him what it was that weighed on her, and at last, with eyes full of tears, she forced herself to say: 

“You yourself have seen what they take me for.”

“And you have seen,” he quickly replied, “how I punish those who forget the respect they owe to you.”

“But you are so dreadful in your wrath!” The words broke from her lips.  “Where others blame, you can destroy; and you do it, too, when passion carries you away.  I am bound to obey your call, and here I am.  But I fancy myself like the little dog—­you may see him any day—­which in the beast-garden of the Panaeum, shares a cage with a royal tiger.  The huge brute puts up with a great deal from his small companion, but woe betide the dog if the tiger once pats him with his heavy, murderous paw—­and he might, out of sheer forgetfulness!”

“But this hand,” Caesar broke in, raising his delicate hand covered with rings, “will never forget, any more than my heart, how much it owes to you.”

“Until I, in some unforeseen way—­perhaps quite unconsciously—­excite your anger,” sighed Melissa.  “Then you will be carried away by passion, and I shall share the common fate.”

Caracalla was about to reply indignantly, but just then Adventus entered the room, announcing the chief astrologer of the Temple of Serapis.  Caracalla refused to receive him just then, but he anxiously asked whether he had any signs to report.  The reply was in the affirmative, and in a few minutes Caesar had in his hand a wax tablet covered with words and figures.  He studied it eagerly, and his countenance cleared; still holding the tablets, he exclaimed to Melissa: 

“You, daughter of Heron, have nothing to fear from me, you of all the world!  In some quiet hour I will explain to you how my planet yearns to yours, and yours—­that is, yourself—­to mine.  The gods have created us for each other, child; I am already under your influence, but your heart still hesitates, and I know why; it is because you distrust me.”

Melissa raised her large eyes to his face in astonishment, and he went on, pensively: