le appearance would have been striking for
its peculiar refinement, even if the eyes had not sparkled with such
vivid and piercing keenness from under the thick brows, and if the high,
smooth, slightly prominent forehead had not borne witness to the power
and profundity of his mind. Melissa knew of no one with whom to compare
him; he reminded Andreas of the picture of John as an old man, which a
wealthy fellow-Christian had presented to the church of Saint Mark.

If this man could do nothing, there was no help on earth. And how
dignified and self-possessed were the movements of this bent old man as
he leaned on his staff! He, a stranger here, seemed to be showing the
others the way, a guide in his own realm. Melissa had heard that the
strong scent of the kyphi might prove injurious to Diodoros, and her one
thought now was the desire that Galenus might soon approach his couch. He
did not, in fact, begin with the sick nearest to the door, but stood
awhile in the middle of the hall, leaning against a column and surveying
the place and the beds.

When his searching glance rested on that where Diodoros was lying, an
answering look met his with reverent entreaty from a pair of beautiful,
large, innocent eyes. A smile parted his bearded lips, and going up to
the girl he said: "Where beauty bids, even age must obey. Your lover,
child, or your brother?"

"My betrothed," Melissa hastened to reply; and the maidenly embarrassment
which flushed her cheek became her so well that he added:

"He must have much to recommend him if I allow him to carry you off, fair
maid."

With these words he went up to the couch, and looking at Diodoros as he
lay, he murmured, as if speaking to himself and without paying any heed
to the younger men who crowded round him:

"There are no true Greeks left here; but the beauty of the ancestral race
is not easily stamped out, and is still to be seen in their descendants.
What a head, what features, and what hair!"

Then he felt the lad's breast, shoulders, and arms, exclaiming in honest
admiration, "What a godlike form!"

He laid his delicate old hand, with its network of blue veins, on the
sick man's forehead, again glanced round the room, and listened to
Ptolemaeus, who gave him a brief and technical report of the case; then,
sniffing the heavy scent that filled the hall, he said, as the Christian
leech ceased speaking:

"We will try; but not here--in a room less full of incense. This perfume
b