Like Melissa, her lover and Alexander had been led by thorny paths to the stars which shine on happy souls and shed their light in the hearts of those to whom the higher truth is revealed.  It was as Christians that Diodoros and Alexander both came to visit the convalescent.  That which had won so many Alexandrians to the blessings of the new faith had attracted them too, and the certainty of finding their beloved among the Christians had been an added inducement to crave instruction from Zeno.  And it had been given them in so zealous and captivating a manner that, in their impressionable hearts, the desire for learning had soon been turned to firm conviction and inspired ardor.

Agatha was betrothed to Alexander.

The scorn of his fellow-citizens, which had fallen on the innocent youth and which he had supposed would prevent his ever winning her love, had in fact secured it to him, for Agatha’s father was very ready to trust his child to the man who had rescued her, whom she loved, and in whom he saw one of the lowly who should be exalted.

Alexander was not told of Philip’s death till his own wounds were healed; but he had meanwhile confided to Andreas that he had made up his mind to fly to a distant land that he might never again see Agatha, and thus not rob the brother on whom he had brought such disaster of the woman he loved.  The freedman had heard him with deep emotion, and within a few hours after Andreas had reported to Zeno the self-sacrificing youth’s purpose, Zeno had gone to Alexander and greeted him as his son.

Melissa found in Agatha the sister she had so long pined for; and how happy it made her to see her brother’s eyes once more sparkle with gladness!  Alexander, even as a Christian and as Agatha’s husband, remained an artist.

The fortune accumulated by Andreas—­the solidi with which he had formerly paid the scapegrace painter’s debts included—­was applied to the erection of a new and beautiful house of God on the spot where Heron’s house had stood.  Alexander decorated it with noble pictures, and as this church was soon too small to accommodate the rapidly increasing congregation, he painted the walls of yet another, with figures whose extreme beauty was famous throughout Christendom, and which were preserved and admired till gloomy zealots prohibited the arts in churches and destroyed their works.

Melissa could not be safe in Alexandria.  After being quietly married in the house of Polybius, she, with her young husband and Andreas, moved to Carthage, where an uncle of Diodoros dwelt.  Love went them, and, with love, happiness.  They were not long compelled to remain in exile; a few months after their marriage news was brought to Carthage that Caesar had been murdered by the centurion Martialis, prompted by the tribunes Apollinaris and Nemesianus Aurelius.  Immediately on this, Macrinus, the praetorian prefect, was proclaimed emperor by the troops.