heart that all these hopes should be changed to sorrow and disappointment
through her. And so she said, with tearful eyes, and shook hey head when
the lady assured her that with her it was a question of a cruelly spoiled
life, whereas her father would only have to renounce some idle vanities
which he would forget as easily as he had seized upon them.

"You do not know him," answered the maiden, sadly. "If I fly, then he
too must hide himself in a far country. He will never be happy again if
they take him from the little house--his birds--our mother's grave. It
was for her sake alone that he took no thought for the ivory seat in the
curia. If you only knew how he clings to everything that reminds him of
our mother, and she never left our city."

Here she was interrupted by the entrance of Philostratus. He was not
alone; an imperial slave accompanied him, bringing a graceful basket with
gifts from the emperor to Melissa.

First came a wreath of roses and lotos-flowers, looking as if they had
been plucked just before sunrise, for among the blossoms and leaves there
flashed and sparkled a glittering dew of diamonds, lightly fastened on
delicate silver wires. Next came a bunch of flowers, round whose stems a
supple golden snake was twined, covered with rubies and diamonds and
destined to coil itself round a woman's arm. The third was a necklace of
extremely costly Persian pearls, which had once belonged--so the merchant
had declared--to great Cleopatra's treasure.

Melissa loved flowers; and the costly gifts that accompanied them could
not fail to rejoice a woman's heart. And yet she only gave them a
passing glance, reddening painfully as she did so.