Scarcely had they left the antechamber than Adventus called Melissa and Philostratus to the emperor.  Caracalla was seated on a raised throne of gold and ivory, with bright scarlet cushions.  As on the preceding day, he was magnificently dressed, and wore a laurel wreath on his head.  The lion, who lay chained beside the throne, stirred as he caught sight of the new-comers, which caused Caracalla to exclaim to Melissa:  “You have stayed away from me so long that my ‘Sword of Persia’ fails to recognize you.  Were it not more to my taste to show you how dear you are to me, I could be angry with you, coy bird that you are!”

As Melissa bent respectfully before him, he gazed delighted into her glowing face, saying, as he turned half to her and half to Philostratus:  “How she blushes!  She is ashamed that, though I could get no sleep during the night, and was tortured by an indescribable restlessness, she refused to obey my call, although she very well knows that the one remedy for her sleepless friend lies in her beautiful little hand.  Hush, hush!  The high-priest has told me that you did not sleep beneath the same roof as I. But that only turned my thoughts in the right direction.  Child, child!—­See now, Philostratus—­the red rose has become a white one.  And how timid she is!  Not that it offends me, far from it—­it delights me.—­Those flowers, Philostratus!  Take them, Melissa; they add less to your beauty than you to theirs.”  He seized the splendid roses he had ordered for her early that morning and fastened the finest in her girdle himself.  She did not forbid him, and stammered a few-low words of thanks.

How his face glowed!  His eyes rested in ecstatic delight upon his chosen one.  In this past night, after he had called for her and waited in vain with feverish longing for her coming, it had dawned on him with convincing force that this gentle child had awakened a new, intense passion in him.  He loved her, and he was glad of it—­he who till now had taken but a passing pleasure in beautiful women.  Longing for her till it became torture, he swore to himself to make her his, and share his all with her, even to the purple.

It was not his habit to hesitate, and at daybreak he had sent for his mother’s messengers that they might inform her of his resolve.  No one dared to gainsay him, and he expected it least of all from her whom he designed to raise so high.  But she felt utterly estranged from him, and would gladly have told him to his face what she felt.

Still, it was absolutely necessary that she should restrain herself and endure his insufferable endearments, and even force herself to speak.  And yet her tongue seemed tied, and it was only by the utmost effort of her will that she could bring herself to express her astonishment at his rapid return to health.

“It is like magic,” she concluded, and he heartily agreed.  Attacks of that kind generally left their effects for four days or more.  But the most astonishing thing was that in spite of being in the best of health, he was suffering from the gravest illness in the world.  “I have fallen a victim to the fever of love, my Philostratus,” he cried, with a tender glance at Melissa.