tures. Melissa could bear it no
longer; she had risen to go and entreat the men to make less noise, when
suddenly all was still.

Diodoros immediately became calmer, and looked up at the girl as
gratefully as though the soothing silence were owing to her. She could
now hear the deep tones of the head of the Church of Alexandria, and
understood that the matter in hand was the readmission into this
congregation of a man who had been turned out by some other sect. Some
would have him rejected, and commended him to the mercy of God; others,
less rigid, were willing to receive him, since he was ready to submit to
any penance.

Then the quarrel began again. High above every other voice rose the
shrill tones of a man who had just arrived from Carthage, and who boasted
of personal friendship with the venerable Tertullian. The listening girl
could no longer follow the connection of the discussion, but the same
names again met her ear; and, though she understood nothing of the
matter, it annoyed her, because the turmoil disturbed her lover's rest.

It was not till the sick-nurse came back that the tumult was appeased;
for, as soon as she learned how seriously the loud disputes of her
fellow-believers were disturbing the sick man's rest, she interfered so
effectually, that the house was as silent as before.

The deaconess Katharine was the name by which she was known, and in a few
minutes she returned to her patient's bedside.

Andreas followed her, with the leech, a man of middle height, whose
shrewd and well-formed head, bald but for a little hair at the sides, was
set on a somewhat ungainly body. His sharp eyes looked hither and
thither, and there was something jerky in his quick movements; still,
their grave decisiveness made up for the lack of grace. He paid no heed
to the bystanders, but threw himself forward rather than bent over the
patient, felt him, and with a light hand renewed his bandages; and then
he looked round the room, examining it as curiously as though he proposed
to take up his abode there, ending by fixing his prominent, round eyes on
Melissa. There was something so ruthlessly inquisitive in that look that
it might, under other circumstances, have angered her. However, as it
was, she submitted to it, for she saw that it was shrewd, and she would
have called the wisest physician on earth to her lover's bedside if she
had had the power.

When Ptolemaeus--for so he was called--had, in reply to the question