Melissa lifted her hands in prayer before the statue of the god.

She was alone, with the exception of the priest in charge.

The temple-servant was absent, and the priest was asleep, breathing heavily, in an arm-chair in a dark nook behind the marble group.

Thus she was free to follow the impulse of her heart, and pray, first for her sick lover, and then for the sufferer to whom the whole subservient world belonged.
For Diodoros, indeed, as she knew, other hands and hearts were uplifted in loving sympathy.

But who besides herself was praying for the hated sovereign who had at his command the costliest and rarest gifts of fortune, all poisoned by bitter anguish of mind and body?
The world thought only of the sufferings he had inflicted on others; no one dreamed of the pangs he had to endure--no one but herself, to whom Galenus had spoken of them.