“You understand now how I came to shed my brother’s blood?”

She started, and repeated gently after him:  “Yes, I understand it.”

Deep compassion filled her heart, and yet she felt she dare not sanction what she had heard and deplored.  Torn by deep and conflicting feelings she threw back her head, brushed her hair off her face, and cried:  “Let me go now; I can bear it no longer!”

“So soft-hearted?” asked he, and shook his head disapprovingly.  “Life rages more wildly round the throne than in an artist’s home.  You will have to learn to swim through the roaring torrent with me.  Believe me, even enormities can become quite commonplace.  And, besides, why does it still shock you when you yourself know that it was indispensable?”

“I am only a weak girl, and I feel as if I had witnessed these fearful deeds, and had to bear the terrible blood-guiltiness with you!” broke from her lips.

“That is what you must and shall do!  It is to that end that I have confided to you what no one else has ever heard from my mouth!” cried Caracalla, his eyes flashing more brightly.  She felt as though this cry called her from her slumbers and revealed the precipice to which she had strayed in her sleepwalking.

When Caracalla had begun telling her of his youth, she had only listened with half an ear; for she could not forget Berenike’s rescuing ship.  But soon his confessions completely attracted her attention, and the lament of this powerful man on whom so many injuries and wrongs had fallen, who even in childhood had been deprived of the happiness of a mother’s love, had touched her tender heart.  That which was afterward told to her she had identified with her own humble life; she heard with a shudder that it was to the malice of his brother that this unhappy being owed the injury which, like a poisonous blight, had marred for him all the joys of existence, while she owed all that was loveliest and best in her young life to a brother’s love.

The grounds on which Caracalla had based the assertion that destiny had compelled him to murder Geta appeared to her young and inexperienced mind as indisputable.  He was only the pitiable victim of his birth and of a cruel fate.  Besides, the humblest and most sober-minded can not resist the charm of majesty; and this hapless man, who had honored Melissa with his confidence, and who had assured her so earnestly that she was of such importance to him and could do so much for him, was the ruler of the universe.

She had also felt, after Caesar’s confession, that she had a right to be proud, since he had thought her worthy to take an interest in the tragedy in the imperial palace, as if she had been a member of the court.  In her lively imagination she had witnessed the ghastly act to which he—­as she had certainly believed, even when she had replied to his question—­had been forced by fate.

But the demand which had followed her answer now recurred to her.  The picture of Diodoros, which had completely vanished from her thoughts while she had been listening, suddenly appeared to her, and, as she fancied, he looked at her reproachfully.