At this Caesar laughed aloud.

“Just so!  You are a woman, and like all the rest.  You are sweet and gentle only so long as you have your own way.”

“No, indeed,” cried Melissa, and her eyes filled with tears.  “I only look further than from one hour to the next.  If I should sacrifice what I think right, merely to come and go at my own will, I should soon be not only miserable myself, but the object of your contempt.”

Overcome by irresistible distress, she broke into loud sobs; but Caracalla, with a furious stamp of his foot, exclaimed: 

“No tears!  I can not, I will not see you weep.  Can any harm come to you?  Nothing but good; nothing but the best of happiness do I propose for you.  By Apollo and Zeus, that is the truth!  Till now you have been unlike other women, but when you behave like them, you shall—­I swear it—­you shall feel which of us two is the stronger!”

He roughly snatched her hand away from her face and thereby achieved his end, for her indignation at being thus touched by a man’s brutal hand gave Melissa strength to suppress her sobs.  Only her wet cheeks showed what a flood of tears she had shed, as, almost beside herself with anger, she exclaimed: 

“Let my hand go!  Shame on the man who insults a defenseless girl!  You swear!  Then I, too, may take an oath, and, by the head of my mother, you shall never see me again excepting as a corpse, if you ever attempt violence!  You are Caesar—­you are the stronger.  Who ever doubted it?  But you will never compel me to a vile action, not if you could inflict a thousand deaths on me instead of one!”

Caracalla, without a word, had released her hand and was staring at her in amazement.

A woman, and so gentle a woman, defying him as no man would have dared to do!

She stood before him, her hand raised, her bosom heaving; a flame of anger sparkled in her eyes through their tears, and he had never before thought her so fair.  What majesty there was in this girl, whose simple grace had made him more than once address her as “child”!  She was like a queen, an empress; perhaps she might become one.  The idea struck him for the first time.  And that little hand which now fell—­what soothing power it had, how much he owed to it!  How fervently he had wished but just now to be understood by her, and to be thought better of by her than by the rest!  And this wish still possessed him.  Nay, he was more strongly attracted than ever to this creature, worthy as she was of the highest in the land, and made doubly bewitching by her proud willfulness.  That he should see her for the last time seemed to him as impossible as that he should never again see daylight; and yet her whole aspect announced that her threat was serious.

His aggrieved pride and offended sense of absolute power struggled with his love, repentance, and fear of losing her healing presence; but the struggle was brief, especially as a mass of business to be attended to lay before him like a steep hill to climb, and haste was imperative.