The high-priest had indeed good cause for anxiety, for he suspected who it was that Caesar hoped to find in the mystic rooms, and feared that his wife might, in fact, have Melissa in hiding in that part of the building to which he was now leading the way.  After Macrinus had come to fetch him he had had no opportunity of inquiring, for the prefect had not quitted him for a moment, and Euryale was in the town busy with other women in seeking out and nursing such of the wounded as had been found alive among the dead.

Caesar triumphed in the changed, gloomy, and depressed demeanor of a man usually so self-possessed; for he fancied that it betrayed some knowledge on the part of Timotheus of Melissa’s hiding-place; and he could jest with the priest of Alexander and his favorite Theokritus and the other friends who attended him, while he ignored the high-priest’s presence and never even alluded to Melissa.

Hardly had they gone past the old man when, just as the kitchen slaves were shouting “Hail, Caesar!” the lady Euryale, as pale as death, hurried in, and with a trembling voice inquired whither her husband was conducting the emperor.

She had turned back when half way on her road, in obedience to the impulse of her heart, which prompted her, before she went on her Samaritan’s errand, to visit Melissa in her hiding-place, and let her see the face of a friend at the beginning of a new, lonely, and anxious day.  On hearing the reply which was readily given, her knees trembled beneath her, and the steward, who saw her totter, supported her and led her into the laboratory, where essences and strong waters soon restored her to consciousness.  Euryale had known the old pastophoros a long time, and, noticing his mourning garb, she asked sympathetically:  “And you, too, are bereft?”

“Of both,” was the answer.  “You were always so good to them—­Slaughtered like beasts for sacrifice—­down there in the stadium,” and tears flowed fast down the old man’s furrowed cheeks.  The lady uplifted her hands as though calling on Heaven to avenge this outrageous crime; at the same instant a loud howl of pain was heard from above, and a great confusion of men’s voices.

Euryale was beside herself with fear.  If they had found Melissa in her room her husband’s fate was sealed, and she was guilty of his doom.  But they could scarcely yet have opened the chambers, and the girl was clever and nimble, and might perhaps escape in time if she heard the men approaching.  She eagerly flew to the window.  She could see below her the stone which Melissa must move to get out; but between the wall and the stadium the street was crowded, and at every door of the Serapeum lictors were posted, even at that stone door known only to the initiated, with the temple slaughterers and other servants who seemed all to be on guard.  If Melissa were to come out now she would be seized, and it must become known who had shown her the way into the hiding-place that had sheltered her.