"Perhaps you feel as if a hammer was hitting you over the left eye?
"If you move rapidly, does it not pierce your skull, and do you not feel as sick as if you were on the rocking sea ?" "Then you also know this torment ?" asked Caracalla, surprised; but she answered, quietly, that her mother had suffered several times from similar headaches, and had described them to her.
Caesar sank back again on the pillows, moved his dry lips, and glanced toward the drink which Galen had prescribed for him; and Melissa, who almost as a child had long nursed a dear invalid, guessed what he wanted, brought him the goblet, and gave him a draught.
Caracalla rewarded her with a grateful look.

But the physic only seemed to increase the pain.

He lay there panting and motionless, until, trying to find a new position, he groaned, lightly: "It is as if iron was being hammered here.

One would think others might hear it." At the same time he seized the girl's hand and placed it on his burning brow.
Melissa felt the pulse in the sufferer's temple throbbing hard and short against her fingers, as she had her mother's when she laid her cool hand on her aching forehead; and then, moved by the wish to comfort and heal, she let her right hand rest over the sick man's eyes.

As soon as she felt one hand was hot, she put the other in its place; and it must have relieved the patient, for his moans ceased by degrees, and he finally said, gratefully: "What good that does me! You are--I knew you would help me.