with the
high-priest at his side and his suite at his heels, the dreadful monster
who had murdered his noble sons? He had pictured the dreadful tyrant
quite differently. Now Caesar was laughing, and the tall man next him
made some light and ready reply--the head cook said it was the Roman
priest of Alexander, who was not on good terms with Timotheus. Could they
be laughing at the high-priest? Never, in all the years he had known him,
had he seen Timotheus so pale and dejected.

The high-priest had indeed good cause for anxiety, for he suspected who
it was that Caesar hoped to find in the mystic rooms, and feared that his
wife might, in fact, have Melissa in hiding in that part of the building
to which he was now leading the way. After Macrinus had come to fetch him
he had had no opportunity of inquiring, for the prefect had not quitted
him for a moment, and Euryale was in the town busy with other women in
seeking out and nursing such of the wounded as had been found alive among
the dead.

Caesar triumphed in the changed, gloomy, and depressed demeanor of a man
usually so self-possessed; for he fancied that it betrayed some knowledge
on the part of Timotheus of Melissa's hiding-place; and he could jest
with the priest of Alexander and his favorite Theokritus and the other
friends who attended him, while he ignored the high-priest's presence and
never even alluded to Melissa.

Hardly had they gone past the old man when, just as the kitchen slaves
were shouting "Hail, Caesar!" the lady Euryale, as pale as death, hurried
in, and with a trembling voice inquired whither her husband was
conducting the emperor.

She had turned back when half way on her road, in obedience to the
impulse of her heart, which prompted her, before she went on her
Samaritan's errand, to visit Melissa in her hiding-place, and let her see
the face of a friend at the beginning of a new, lonely, and anxious day.
On hearing the reply which was readily given, her knees trembled beneath
her, and the steward, who saw her totter, supported her and led her into
the laboratory, where essences and strong waters soon restored her to
consciousness. Euryale had known the old pastophoros a long time, and,
noticing his mourning garb, she asked sympathetically: "And you, too, are
bereft?"

"Of both," was the answer. "You were always so good to them--Slaughtered
like beasts for sacrifice--down there in the stadium," and tears flowed
fast down the old man's furrow