rapis and
Isis. But since, in her last sickness, Melissa had offered everything
she possessed to these divinities of healing, and all in vain, and since
she had heard things in the Serapeum itself which even now brought
a blush to her cheek, she had turned away from the great god of the
Alexandrians. Though he who had offended her by such base proposals was
but a priest of the lower grade--and indeed, though she knew it not, was
since dead--she feared meeting him again, and had avoided the sanctuary
where he officiated.

She was a thorough Alexandrian, and had been accustomed from childhood
to listen to the philosophical disputations of the men about her. So she
perfectly understood her brother Philip, the skeptic, when he said that
he by no means denied the existence of the immortals, but that, on the
other hand, he could not believe in it; that thought brought him no
conviction; that man, in short, could be sure of nothing, and so could
know nothing whatever of the divinity. He had even denied, on logical
grounds, the goodness and omnipotence of the gods, the wisdom and
fitness of the ordering of the universe, and Melissa was proud of her
brother's acumen; but what appeals to the brain only, and not to
the heart, can not move a woman to anything great--least of all to a
decisive change of life or feeling. So the girl had remained constant to
her mother's faith in some mighty powers outside herself, which guided
the life of Nature and of human beings. Only she did not feel that she
had found the true god, either in Serapis or Isis, and so she had sought
others. Thus she had formulated a worship of ancestors, which, as she
had learned from the slave-woman of her friend Ino, was not unfamiliar
to the Egyptians.

In Alexandria there were altars to every god, and worship in every form.
Hers, however, was not among them, for the genius of her creed was the
enfranchised soul of her mother, who had cast off the burden of this
perishable body. Nothing had ever come from her that was not good and
lovely; and she knew that if her mother were permitted, even in some
other than human form, she would never cease to watch over her with
tender care.

And those initiated into the Eleusinian mysteries, as Diodoros had told
her, desired the immortality of the soul, to the end that they might
continue to participate in the life of those whom they had left behind.
What was it that brought such multitudes at this time out to the
Nekrop