she would have said to such a union. There was little, time to escape
from this terrible wooer.

Then Melissa turned to her brother and begged him earnestly: "Then you
take me to the ship Alexander; take charge of me yourself!"

"And I?" asked Heron, his eye cast gloomily on the ground.

"You must come with us!" implored the girl, clasping her hands.--"O
Andreas! say something! Tell him what I have to expect!"

"He knows that without my telling him," replied the freedman. "I must go
now, for two lives are at stake, Heron. If I can not keep the physician
away from Caesar, your daughter, too, will be in danger. If you desire
to see your daughter forever in fear of death, give her in marriage to
Caracalla. If you have her happiness at heart, then escape with her into
a far country."

He nodded to the brother and sister, and returned to the sick-room.

"Fly!--escape!" repeated the old man, and he waived his hand angrily.
"This Andreas--the freedman, the Christian--always in extremes. Why run
one's head against the wall? First consider, then act; that was what she
taught us whose sacred memory you have but now invoked, Alexander."

With this he walked out of the half-dark corridor into the open court-
yard, in front of his children. Here he looked at his daughter, who was
breathing fast, and evidently prepared to resist to the last. And as he
beheld her in Korinna's white and costly robes, like a noble priestess,
it occurred to him that even before his captivity she had ceased to be