for the second time this morning he looked in her face with utter
amazement.

He could not but approve her warning not to betray Alexander's hiding-
place, and her suggestion that he should go to see his eldest son
coincided with an unspoken desire which had been lurking in his mind
ever since she had told him of her having seen a disembodied soul. The
possibility of seeing her once more, whose memory was dearer to him than
all else on earth, had such a charm, that it moved him more deeply than
the danger of his son, who was, nevertheless, very dear to his strangely
tempered heart.

So he answered Melissa coolly, as if he were telling her of a decision
already formed:

"Of course! I meant to see Philip too; only--" and he paused, for
anxiety about Alexander again came to the front--" I can not bear to
remain in such uncertainty about the boy."

At this instant the door opened. The new-comer was Andreas, the man to
whom Diodoros had advised Alexander to apply for protection and counsel;
and Melissa greeted him with filial affection.

He was a freedman in her lover's family, and was the steward and manager
of his master's extensive gardens and lands, which were under his
absolute control. No one could have imagined that this man had ever been
a slave; his face was swarthy, but his fine black eyes lighted it up with
a glance of firm self reliance and fiery energy. It was the look of a
man who might be the moving spirit of one of those rebellions which were
frequent in Alexandria; there was an imperious ring in his voice, and