Cerberus, young man, you are to be envied! The beauty my sovereign lord
is limping after flies unbidden into your arms!"

Then came loud laughter as before, but this time interrupted by
Diodoros's indignant question as to what this all meant. At last Melissa
heard Andreas's deep voice promising the young man to tell him everything
later on; and when the convalescent impatiently asked for an immediate
explanation, the Christian exhorted him to be calm, and finally requested
the physician to grant him a few moments' conversation.

Then there was quiet for a time in the room, only broken by Diodoros's
angry questions and the pacifying exclamations of the freedman. She felt
as if she must return to her lover and tell him herself what she had been
forced to do in these last days, but maidenly shyness restrained her,
till at last Andreas came out. The freedman's honest face expressed the
deepest solicitude, and his voice sounded rough and hasty as he
exclaimed, "You must fly--fly this day!" And my father and brother, and
Diodoros?" she asked, anxiously. But he answered, urgently:

"Let them get away as they may. There is no hole or corner obscure
enough to keep you hidden. Therefore take advantage of the ship that
waits for you. Follow Argutis at once to the lady Berenike. I can not
accompany you, for it lies with me to occupy for the next few hours the
attention of the body-physician, from whom you have the most to fear.
He has consented to go with me to my garden across the water. There I
promised him a delicious, real Alexandrian feast, and you know how gladly
Polybius will seize the opportunity to share it with him. No doubt, too,
some golden means may be found to bind his tongue; for woe to you if
Caracalla discovers prematurely that you are promised to another, and
woe then to your betrothed! After sundown, when every one here has gone