all to you afterwards. Quiet, only
perfect quiet--No melancholy leave-taking, child! The sooner you are out
of the house the better."

He went back again to the bed, laid his hand for a moment on the sick
man's forehead, and then left the room.

Diodoros lay still and indifferent on the couch. Melissa kissed him on
the brow, and withdrew without his observing it, her eyes full of tears.

ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:

For what will not custom excuse and sanctify?

A THORNY PATH

By Georg Ebers

Volume 3.

CHAPTER VIII.

The sun had passed the meridian when Melissa and Andreas left the house.
They walked on in silence through the deserted streets, the girl with her
eyes sadly fixed on the ground; for an inward voice warned her that her
lover's life was in danger. She did not sob, but more than once she wiped
away a large tear.

Andreas, too, was lost in his own thoughts. To win a soul to the Saviour
was surely a good work. He knew Melissa's sober, thoughtful nature, and
the retired, joyless life she led with her surly old father. So his
knowledge of human nature led him to think that she, if any one, might
easily be won over to the faith in which he found his chief happiness.
Baptism had given such sanctification to his life that he longed to lead
the daughter of the only woman for whom his heart had ever beat a shade
faster, to the baptismal font. In the heat of summer Olympias had often
been the guest for weeks together of Polybius's wife, now likewise dead.
Then she had taken a little house of her own for herself and her
children, and when his master's wife died, the lonely widower had known
no greater pleasure than that of receiving her on his estate for as long
as Heron would allow her to remain; he himself never left his work for
long. Thus Andreas had become the great ally of the gem-cutter's
children, and, as they could learn nothing from him that was not good and
worth knowing, Olympias had gladly allowed them to remain in his society,
and herself found a teacher and friend in the worthy steward. She knew
that Andreas had joined the Christians; she had made him tell her much
about his faith; still, as the daughter and wife of artists, she was
firmly attached to the old gods, and could only regard the Christian
doctrine as a new system of philosophy in which many things attracted
her, but many, on the other hand, repelled her. At that time his passion
for Melissa's mother had p