He went up to her, shaking his head, and said in the superior tone of a sage rebuking thoughtlessness: 

“Like all the rest of them—­I repeat it.  My demands had no object in view but to make you happy and derive comfort from you.  How hot must the blood be which boils and foams at the contact of a spark!  Only too like my own; and, since I understand you, I find it easy to forgive you.  Indeed, I must finally express myself grateful; for I was in danger of neglecting my duties as a sovereign for the sake of pleasing my heart.  Go, then, and rest, while I devote myself to business.”

At this, Melissa forced herself to smile, and said, still somewhat tearfully:  “How grateful I am!  And you will not again require me to remain, will you, when I assure you that it is not fitting?”

“Unluckily, I am not in the habit of yielding to a girl’s whims.”

“I have no whims,” she eagerly declared.  “But you will keep your word now, and allow me to withdraw?  I implore you to let me go!”

With a deep sigh and an amount of self-control of which he would yesterday have thought himself incapable, he let go her hand, and she with a shudder thought that she had found the answer to the question he had asked her.  His eyes, not his words, had betrayed it; for a woman can see in a suitor’s look what color his wishes take, while a woman’s eyes only tell her lover whether or no she reciprocates his feelings.

“I am going,” she said, but he remarked the deadly paleness which overspread her features, and her colorless cheeks encouraged him in the belief that, after a sleepless night and the agitations of the last few hours, it was only physical exhaustion which made Melissa so suddenly anxious to escape from him.  So, saying kindly: 

“’Till to-morrow, then,” he dismissed her.

But when she had almost left the room, he added:  “One thing more!  To-morrow we will try our zitherns together.  After my bath is the time I like best for such pleasant things; Adventus will fetch you.  I am curious to hear you play and sing.  Of all sounds, that of the human voice is the sweetest.  Even the shouting of my legions is pleasing to the ear and heart.  Do you not think so, and does not the acclamation of so many thousands stir your soul?”

“Certainly,” she replied hastily; and she longed to reproach him for the injustice he was doing the populace of Alexandria to benefit his warriors, but she felt that the time was ill chosen, and everything gave way to her longing to be gone out of the dreadful man’s sight.

In the next room she met Philostratus, and begged him to conduct her to the lady Euryale; for all the anterooms were now thronged, and she had lost the calm confidence in which she had come thither.

CHAPTER XXII.

As Melissa made her way with the philosopher through the crowd, Philostratus said to her:  “It is for your sake, child, that these hundreds have had so long to wait to-day, and many hopes will be disappointed.  To satisfy all is a giant’s task.  But Caracalla must do it, well or ill.”