gged the invalid. "When the others talk, they
make the beating in my head ten times worse, and excite me; but I like to
hear your voice."

"The beating?" interrupted Melissa, in whom this word awoke old memories.
"Perhaps you feel as if a hammer was hitting you over the left eye?

"If you move rapidly, does it not pierce your skull, and do you not feel
as sick as if you were on the rocking sea?"

"Then you also know this torment?" asked Caracalla, surprised; but she
answered, quietly, that her mother had suffered several times from
similar headaches, and had described them to her.

Caesar sank back again on the pillows, moved his dry lips, and glanced
toward the drink which Galen had prescribed for him; and Melissa, who
almost as a child had long nursed a dear invalid, guessed what he wanted,
brought him the goblet, and gave him a draught.

Caracalla rewarded her with a grateful look. But the physic only seemed
to increase the pain. He lay there panting and motionless, until, trying
to find a new position, he groaned, lightly:

"It is as if iron was being hammered here. One would think others might
hear it."

At the same time he seized the girl's hand and placed it on his burning
brow.

Melissa felt the pulse in the sufferer's temple throbbing hard and short
against her fingers, as she had her mother's when she laid her cool hand
on her aching forehead; and then, moved by the wish to comfort and heal,
she let her right hand rest over the sick man's eyes. As soon as she felt
one hand was hot, she put the other in its place; and it must have
relieved the patient, for his moans ceased by degrees, and he finally
said, gratefully:

"What good that does me! You are--I knew you would help me. It is already
quite quiet in my brain. Once more your hand, dear girl!"

Melissa willingly obeyed him, and as he breathed more and more easily,
she remembered that her mother's headache had often been relieved when
she had placed her hand on her forehead. Caesar, now opening his eyes
wide, and looking her full in the face, asked why she had not allowed him
sooner to reap the benefit of this remedy.

Melissa slowly withdrew her hand, and with drooping eyes answered gently:

"You are the emperor, a man. . . and I. . . . But Caracalla interrupted
her eagerly, and with a clear voice:

"Not so, Melissa! Do not you feel, like me, that something else draws us
to one another, like what binds a man to his wife?-There lies the gem.