e. But, tell
me--how did you feel as you left the sanctuary?"

"Light-hearted, my lord, and content," she answered, with a frank, glad
look in her fine eyes. "I could have sung as I went down the road, though
there were people about."

"I should have liked to hear you," he said, kindly, and he still held her
hand, which he had grasped with the amiable geniality that characterized
him, when they were joined by the senator and his sister-in-law.

"Has she won your good offices?" asked Coeranus; and Philostratus
replied, quickly, "Anything that it lies in my power to do for her shall
certainly be done."

Berenike bade them both to join her in her own rooms, for everything that
had to do with the banquet was odious to her; and as they went, Melissa
told her new friend her brother's story. She ended it in the quiet
sitting-room of the mistress of the house, an artistic but not splendid
apartment, adorned only with the choicest works of early Alexandrian art.
Philostratus listened attentively, but, before she could put her petition
for help into words, he exclaimed:

"Then what we have to do is, to move Caesar to mercy, and that--Child,
you know not what you ask!"

They were interrupted by a message from Seleukus, desiring Coeranus to
join the other guests, and as soon as he had left them Berenike withdrew
to take off the splendor she hated. She promised to return immediately
and join their discussion, and Philostratus sat for a while lost in
thought. Then he turned to Melissa and asked her:

"Would you for their sakes be able to make up your mind to face bitter
humiliation, nay, perhaps imminent danger?"

"Anything! I would give my life for them!" replied the girl, with spirit,
and her eyes gleamed with such enthusiastic self-sacrifice that his
heart, though no longer young, warmed under their glow, and the principle
to which he had sternly adhered since he had been near the imperial
person, never to address a word to the sovereign but in reply, was blown
to the winds.

Holding her hand in his, with a keen look into her eyes, he went on:

"And if you were required to do a thing from which many a man even would
recoil--you would venture?"

And again the answer was a ready "Yes." Philostratus released her hand,
and said:

"Then we will dare the worst. I will smooth the way for you, and
to-morrow--do not start--tomorrow you yourself, under my protection,
shall appeal to Caesar."

The color faded from the girl's