ed the physician, indignantly. From that light Phryne, who
kissed and embraced my rich host's son down there in his sick-room?

"At this the emperor, who had not lost consciousness for one moment,
started as if stung by a serpent, and sprang at the physician's throat
screaming while he threatened to strangle him:

"What was that? What did you say? Cursed babbler! The truth, villain, and
the whole truth, if you love your life!"

The half-choked man, ever prone to talking, had no reason for concealing
from Caesar what he had seen with his own eyes, and had subsequently
heard in the Serapeum and at the table of Polybius.

When life was at stake a promise to a freedman could be of no account, so
he gave free rein to his tongue, and answered the questions Caracalla
hoarsely put to him without reserve, and--being a man used to the ways of
a court--with insinuations that were doubly welcome to a judge so eager
for damning evidence.

Yesterday, the day before, and the day before that--every day on which
Melissa had pretended to feel the mysterious ties that bound her heart to
his, every day that she had feigned love and led him on to woo her, she
had--as he now learned--granted to another what she had refused to him
with such stern discretion. Her prayer for him, the sympathy she said she
felt, the maidenly sensibility which had charmed him in her--all, all had
been lies, deceit, sham, in order to attain an object. And that old man
and the brothers to serve whom she had dared to approach him--they all
knew the cruel game she was playing with him and his heart's love. The
lips that had lured him into the vilest trap with lying words had kissed
another. He seemed to hear the Alexandrians laughing at the forsaken
bridegroom, to see them pointing the finger of derision at the man whom
cunning woman had deceived even before marriage. What a feast for their
ribald wit!

And yet--he would have willingly borne it all, and more, for the
certainty that she had really loved him once; that her heart had been
his, if only for one short hour.

On those shreds of papyrus scattered over the floor she confessed she was
not able to accede to his wishes, because she had already given her faith
to another before she ever saw Caracalla. It was true she had felt
herself drawn to him as to no other but her betrothed; and had he been
content to let her be near him as a faithful servant and sicknurse, then
indeed . . . In short, he was informed