The streets along which they passed in the pale morning light were now deserted, and a film of mist, behind which glowed the golden light of the newly risen sun, shrouded the horizon.  The fresh air of morning was delicious, and at this early hour there was no one to avoid—­only the peasants and their wives carrying the produce of their gardens and fields to market on asses, or wagons drawn by oxen.  The black slaves of the town were sweeping the roadway.  Here there were parties of men, women, and children on their way to work in factories, which were at rest but for a few hours in the bustling town.  The bakers and other provision-dealers were opening their shops; the cobblers and metalworkers were already busy or lighting fires in their open stalls; and Andreas nodded to a file of slave-girls who had come across from the farm and gardens of Polybius, and who now walked up the street with large milk-jars and baskets of vegetables poised on their heads and supported with one gracefully raised arm.

They presently crossed the Aspendia Canal, where the fog hung over the water like white smoke, hiding the figure of the tutelary goddess of the town on the parapet of the bridge from those who crossed by the roadway.  The leaves of the mimosa-trees by the quay—­nay, the very stones of the houses and the statues, wet with the morning dew—­looked revived and newly washed; and a light breeze brought up from the Serapeum broken tones of the chant, sung there every morning by a choir of priests, to hail the triumph of light over darkness.

The crisp morning air was as invigorating to Melissa as her cold bath had been, after a night which had brought her so little rest.  She felt as though she, and all Nature with her, had just crossed the threshold of a new day, bidding her to fresh life and labor.  Now and then a flame from Lucifer’s torch swallowed up a stretch of morning mist, while the Hours escorted Phoebus Apollo, whose radiant diadem of beams was just rising above the haze; Melissa could have declared she saw them dancing forth before him and strewing the path of the sun with flowers.  All this was beautiful—­as beautiful as the priest’s chant, the aromatic sweetness of the air, and the works of art in cast bronze or hewn marble which were to be seen on the bridge, on the temple to Isis and Anubis to the right of the street, under the colonnades of the handsomest houses, on the public fountains—­in short, wherever the eye might turn.  Her lover, borne before her in a litter, was on the way to the physician in whose hands lay the power to cure him.  She felt as though Hope led the way.

Since love had blossomed in her breast her quiet life had become an eventful one.  Most of what she had gone through had indeed filled her with alarms.  Serious questions to which she had never given a thought had been brought before her; and yet, in this brief period of anxiety she had gained the precious sense of youthfulness and of capacity for action when she had to depend on herself.  The last few hours had revealed to her the possession of powers which only yesterday she had never suspected.  She, who had willingly yielded to every caprice of her father’s, and who, for love of her brothers, had always unresistingly done their bidding, now knew that she had a will of her own and strength enough to assert it; and this, again, added to her contentment this morning.