suffering emperor. Then she started on the
recollections of her visit to her lover, and when Alexander opened his
heart to her and assured her with fiery ardor that he would not rest till
he had won the heart of the lovely Christian, Agatha, she gladly allowed
him to talk and promised him her assistance. At last they deliberated how
the favor of Caesar--who, Melissa assured him, was cruelly
misunderstood--was to be won for their father and Philip; and finally
they both imagined the surprise of the old man if he should be the first
to meet them after being set at liberty.

The way was far, and when they reached the sea, by the Caesareum in the
Bruchium, the palatial quarter of the town, the first glimmer of
approaching dawn was showing behind the peninsula of Lochias. The sea was
rough, and tossed with heavy, oily waves on the Choma that ran out into
the sea like a finger, and on the walls of the Timoneum at its point,
where Antonius had hidden his disgrace after the battle of Actium.

Alexander stopped by the pillared temple of Poseidon, which stood close
on the shore, between the Choma and the theatre, and, looking toward the
flat, horseshoe-shaped coast of the opposite island which still lay in
darkness, he asked:

"Do you still remember when we went with our mother over to Antirhodos,
and how she allowed us to gather shells in the little harbor? If she were
alive to-day, what more could we wish for?"

"That the emperor was gone," exclaimed the girl from the depths of her
heart; "that Diodoros were well again; that father could use his hands as
he used, and that I might stay with him until Diodoros came to fetch me,
and then . . . oh, if only something could happen to the empire that Caesar
might go away-far away, to the farthest hyperborean land!"

"That will soon happen now," answered Alexander. "Philostratus says that
the Romans will remain at the utmost a week longer."

"So long?" asked Melissa, startled; but Alexander soon pacified her with
the assurance that seven days flew speedily by, and when one looked back
on them they seemed to shrink into only as many hours.

"But do not," he continued, cheerfully, "look into the future! We will
rejoice, for everything is going so well now!"

He stopped here suddenly and gazed anxiously at the sea, which was no
longer completely obscured by the vanishing shadows of night. Melissa
looked in the direction of his pointing hand, and when he cried with
great excitement