voice:

"Not so, Melissa! Do not you feel, like me, that something else draws us
to one another, like what binds a man to his wife?--There lies the
gem. Look at it once again--No, child, no! This resemblance is not
mere accident. The short-sighted, might call it superstition or a vain
illusion; I know better. At least a portion of Alexander's soul lives in
this breast. A hundred signs--I will tell you about it later--make it
a certainty to me. And yesterday morning.... I see it all again before
me.... You stood above me, on the left, at a window.... I looked up;...
our eyes met, and I felt in the depths of my heart a strange emotion....
I asked myself, silently, where I had seen that lovely face before. And
the answer rang, you have already often met her; you know her!"

"My face reminded you of the gem," interrupted Melissa, disquieted.

"No, no," continued Caesar. "It was some thing else. Why had none of
my many gems ever reminded me before of living people? Why did your
picture, I know not how often, recur to my mind? And you? Only recollect
what you have done for me. How marvelously we were brought together! And
all this in the course of a single, short day. And you also.... I ask
you, by all that is holy to you... Did you, after you saw me in the
court of sacrifice, not think of me so often and so vividly that it
astonished you?"

"You are Caesar," answered Melissa, with increasing anxiety.

"So you thought of my purple robes?" asked Caracalla, and his face
clouded over; "or perhaps only of my power that might be fatal to your
family? I will know. Speak the truth, girl, by the head of your father!"

Then Melissa poured forth this confession from her oppressed heart:

"Yes, I could not help remembering you constantly,... and I never saw
you in purple, but just as you had stood there on the steps;... and
then--ah! I have told you already how sorry I was for your sufferings.
I felt as if... but how can I describe it truly?--as if you stood much
nearer to me than the ruler of the world could to a poor, humble girl.
It was... eternal gods!..."

She stopped short; for she suddenly recollected anxiously that this
confession might prove fatal to her. The sentence about the time which
should be fulfilled for each was ringing in her ears, and it seemed to
her that she heard for the second time the lady Berenike's warning.

But Caracalla allowed her no time to think; for he interrupted her,
greatly pleased, with the