speaker adding to their impressiveness by the action of his hands, till
it was more than the invalid could bear. With a pinched smile, he raised
himself with difficulty, and interrupted Theocritus with the impatient
exclamation, "Still the actor!"

"Yes, still!" retorted the favorite, in a hard voice. "You, however, have
been even longer--what you have, indeed, been too long--Prefect of Egypt!"
With an angry fling he threw the corner of his toga over his shoulder,
and, though his hand shook with rage, the pliant drapery fell in graceful
folds over his athletic limbs. He turned his back on the prefect, and,
with the air of a general who has just been crowned with laurels, he
stalked through the anteroom and past Philip once more.

The philosopher had told his sister all this in a few sentences. He now
paused in his walk to and fro to answer Melissa's question as to whether
this upstart's influence were really great enough to turn so noble and
worthy a man out of his office.

"Can you ask?" said Philip. "Titianus had no doubts from the first; and
what I heard in the Serapeum--but all in good time. The prefect was
sorry for my father and Alexander, but ended by saying that he himself
needed an intercessor; for, if it were not to-day, at any rate to-morrow,
the actor would inveigle Caesar into signing his death-warrant."

"Impossible!" cried the girl, spreading out her hands in horror; but
Philip dropped into a seat, saying:

"Listen to the end. There was evidently nothing to be hoped for from
Titianus. He is, no doubt, a brave man, but there is a touch of the
actor in him too. He is a Stoic; and where would be the point of that,