what was going on. This terrible agitation might cost him yet some hours
of great suffering. But he need no longer dread them so much; for there
sat the living remedy which he believed he had secured by the strongest
possible ties.

How fair she was! And, as he looked round once more at Melissa, he
observed that her eye was turned on him with evident anxiety. At this a
light seemed to dawn in his clouded soul, and he was once more conscious
of the love which had blossomed in his heart. But it would never do to
make her who had wrought the miracle so soon the confidante of his
hatred. He had seen her angry, had seen her weep, and had seen her
smile; and within the next few days, which were to make him a happy man
instead of a tortured victim, he longed only to see her great eyes
sparkle and her lips overflow with words of love, joy, and gratitude.
His score with the Alexandrians must be settled later, and it was in his
power to make them atone with their blood and bitterly rue the deeds of
this night.

He passed his hand over his furrowed brow, as though to wake himself from
a bad dream; nay, he even found a smile when next his eyes met hers; and
those spectators to whom his aspect seemed more absorbing than the
horrible slaughter in the arena, looked at each other in amazement, for
the indifference or the dissimulation, whichever it might be, with which
Caesar regarded this unequaled scene of bloodshed, seemed to them quite
incredible.

Never, since his very first visit to a circus, had Caracalla left
unnoticed for so long a time the progress of such a battle as this.
However, nothing very remarkable had so far occurred, for the actual
seizure of the camp had but just begun with the massacre of the Alemanni