The singing had fallen on her agitated soul like the oil
poured by the mariner on the sea to still the foaming breakers. She felt
it so.

She could not help thinking of the time when she could fall asleep on her
mother's bosom in the certainty that tender love was watching over her.
The happiness of childhood, when she loved everything she knew-her
family, the slaves, her father's birds, the flowers in the little garden,
the altar of the goddess to whom she made offering, the very stars in the
sky-seemed to come over her, and there she sat in dreamy lassitude, her
head on her lover's shoulder, till the last stragglers of the procession,
who, were women, many of them carrying little lamps in their hands, had
almost all gone past.

Then she suddenly felt an eager jerk in the shoulder on which her head
was resting.

"Look--look there!" he whispered; and as her eyes followed the direction
of his finger, she too started, and exclaimed, "Korinna!--Did you know
her?"

"She had often come to my father's garden," he replied, "and I saw her
portrait in Alexander's room. These are souls from Hades that we have
seen. We must offer sacrifice, for those to whom they show themselves
they draw after them." At this Melissa, too, shuddered, and exclaimed in
horror: "O Diodoros, not to death! We will ask the priests to-morrow
morning what sacrifice may redeem us. Anything rather than the grave and
the darkness of Hades!--Come, I am strong again now. Let us get away from
hence and go home."

"But we must go through the gate now," replied the youth. "It is not well
to follow in the footsteps of the dead."

Melissa, however, insisted on going on through the street. Terrified as
she was of the nether world and the disembodied souls, she would on no
account risk falling into the hands of the horrible Egyptian, who might
compel her to betray her brother's hiding-place; and Diodoros, who was
ashamed to show her the fears which still possessed him, did as she
desired.

But it was a comfort to him in this horror of death, which had come over
him now for the first time in his life, to kiss the maid once more, and
hold her warm hand in his as they walked on; while the strange chant of
the nocturnal procession still rang in her ears, and now and then the
words recurred to her mind which she had heard in the house where the
departed souls had gathered together:

"The fullness of the time was come."

Did this refer to the hour when the dea