The road led through a palm-grove on the Christian’s estate.  His anxiety to see the beloved sufferers urged him forward so quickly that he presently overtook another man who was walking in the same direction in the cool of the evening.  This was Ptolemaeus, the physician.

He greeted Andreas with cheerful kindness, and the freedman knew what he meant when, without waiting to be asked, he said: 

“We are out of the wood now; the fever has passed away.  The delirious fancies have left her, and since noon she has slept.  When I quitted her an hour ago she was sleeping soundly and quietly.  Till now the shaken soul has been living in a dream; but now that the fever has passed away, she will soon be herself again.  As yet she has recognized no one; neither Agatha nor the lady Euryale; not even Diodoros, whom I allowed to look at her yesterday for a moment.  We have taken her away from the large house in the garden, on account of the children, to the little villa opposite the place of worship.  It is quiet there, and the air blows in on her through the open veranda.  The Empress herself could not wish for a better sick-room.  And the care Agatha takes of her!  You are right to hasten.  The last glimmer of sunshine is extinct, and divine service will soon begin.  I am satisfied with Diodoros too; youth is a soil on which the physician reaps easy laurels.  What will it not heal and strengthen!  Only when the soul is so deeply shaken, as with Melissa and her brother, matters go more slowly, even with the young.  However, as I said, we are past the crisis.”

“God be praised!” said Andreas.  “Such news makes me young again.  I could run like a boy.”  They now entered the well-kept gardens which lay behind Zeno’s house.  Noble clumps of tall old trees rose above the green grass plots and splendid shrubs.  Round a dancing fountain were carefully kept beds of beautiful flowers.  The garden ended at a palm-grove, which cast its shade on Zeno’s little private place of worship—­an open plot inclosed by tamarisk hedges like walls.  The little villa in which Melissa lay was in a bower of verdure, and the veranda with the wide door through which the bed of the sufferer had been carried in, stood open in the cool evening to the garden, the palm-grove, and the place of worship with its garland, as it were, of fragile tamarisk boughs.

Agatha was keeping watch by Melissa; but as the last of the figures, great and small, who could be seen moving across the garden, all in the same direction, disappeared behind the tamarisk screen, the young Christian looked lovingly down at her friend’s pale and all too delicate face, touched her forehead lightly with her lips, and whispered to the sleeper, as though she could hear her voice: 

“I am only going to pray for you and your brother.”

And she went out.

A few moments later the brazen gong was heard—­muffled out of regard for the sick—­which announced the hour of prayer to the little congregation.  It had sounded every evening without disturbing the sufferer, but to-night it roused her from her slumbers.