bride."

Here the strong man with the soft heart broke down, and, clasping
his hands over his face, sobbed aloud, while Melissa clung to him and
stroked his bearded cheeks.

Under her loving words of consolation he soon regained his composure,
and, still struggling against the rising tears, he cried:

"Thank Heaven, there can be no more foolish talk of flight! I shall stay
here; I shall never take advantage of the ivory chair that belongs to
me in the curia in Rome. Your husband, my child, and the state, would
scarcely expect it of me. If, however, Caesar presents me as his
father, with estates and treasures, my first thought shall be to raise a
monument to your mother. You shall see! A monument, I tell you, without
a rival. It shall represent the strength of man submissive to womanly
charm."

He bent down to kiss his daughter's brow, and whispered in her ear:

"Gaze confidently into the future, my girl. A father's eye is not easily
deceived, and so I tell you--that the emperor has been forced to shed
blood do insure the safety of the throne; but, in personal intercourse
with him, I learned to know your future husband as a noble-hearted man.
Indeed, I am not rich enough to thank the gods for such a son-in-law!"

Melissa gazed after her father, incapable of speaking. It went to
her heart that all these hopes should be changed to sorrow and
disappointment through her. And so she said, with tearful eyes, and
shook hey head when the lady assured her that with her it was a question
of a cruelly spoiled life, whereas her father would only have to
renounce some idle vanities which he would forget as easily as he had
seized upon them.

"You do not know him," answered the maiden, sadly. "If I fly, then he
too must hide himself in a far country. He will never be happy again if
they take him from the little house--his birds--our mother's grave. It
was for her sake alone that he took no thought for the ivory seat in the
curia. If you only knew how he clings to everything that reminds him of
our mother, and she never left our city."

Here she was interrupted by the entrance of Philostratus. He was not
alone; an imperial slave accompanied him, bringing a graceful basket
with gifts from the emperor to Melissa.

First came a wreath of roses and lotos-flowers, looking as if they had
been plucked just before sunrise, for among the blossoms and leaves
there flashed and sparkled a glittering dew of diamonds, lightly
fastened on