terday for a moment. We have taken her away from the large house
in the garden, on account of the children, to the little villa opposite
the place of worship. It is quiet there, and the air blows in on her
through the open veranda. The Empress herself could not wish for a better
sick-room. And the care Agatha takes of her! You are right to hasten. The
last glimmer of sunshine is extinct, and divine service will soon begin.
I am satisfied with Diodoros too; youth is a soil on which the physician
reaps easy laurels. What will it not heal and strengthen! Only when the
soul is so deeply shaken, as with Melissa and her brother, matters go
more slowly, even with the young. However, as I said, we are past the
crisis."

"God be praised!" said Andreas. "Such news makes me young again. I could
run like a boy." They now entered the well-kept gardens which lay behind
Zeno's house. Noble clumps of tall old trees rose above the green grass
plots and splendid shrubs. Round a dancing fountain were carefully kept
beds of beautiful flowers. The garden ended at a palm-grove, which cast
its shade on Zeno's little private place of worship--an open plot
inclosed by tamarisk hedges like walls. The little villa in which Melissa
lay was in a bower of verdure, and the veranda with the wide door through
which the bed of the sufferer had been carried in, stood open in the cool
evening to the garden, the palm-grove, and the place of worship with its
garland, as it were, of fragile tamarisk boughs.

Agatha was keeping watch by Melissa; but as the last of the figures,
great and small, who could be seen moving across the garden, all in the
same direction, disappeared behind the tamarisk screen, the young
Christian looked lovingly down at her friend's pale and all too delicate
face, touched her forehead lightly with her lips, and whispered to the
sleeper, as though she could hear her voice:

"I am only going to pray for you and your brother."

And she went out.

A few moments later the brazen gong was heard--muffled out of regard for
the sick--which announced the hour of prayer to the little congregation.
It had sounded every evening without disturbing the sufferer, but
to-night it roused her from her slumbers.

She looked about her in bewilderment and tried to rise, but she was too
weak to lift herself. Terror, blood, Diodoros wounded, Andreas, the ass
on which she had ridden that night, were the images which first crowded
on her awakening spiri