More than once did Oribazius prudently lift the door-curtain, bringing refreshing drink to the sick man. Julian refused it, and kept asking to be left alone. He feared human faces, noise, and light. Keeping his hands pressed against his head, and closing his eyes, he endeavoured to keep his mind a blank; to forget where he was, to forget every emotion. The protracted effort of will sustained during the last three months had changed him, and left him weak and broken, as after a long illness. He knew not whether he was asleep or awake. Visionary scenes, trains of pictures glided before his eyes one after another with amazing swiftness and intolerable precision. Sometimes he fancied he was in bed, in the great hall at Macellum. Old Labda had given him her blessing for the night. The snortings of the horses picketed near the tent became the dull snoring of Mardonius, which the boys used to laugh at. He felt happy and again a young boy, unknown by anyone, far from the world, hidden amongst the Cappadocian mountains. He smelt the fresh and subtle smell of hyacinths, in the first warmth of the March sun, within the little courtyard of the priest Olympiodorus. He heard the silver laughter of Amaryllis and the murmur of the fountain, the metallic clink of the cottabos, and the voice of Diaphane: "Children, the gingerbread cakes are ready!" Then all vanished. Then the only sound he heard was of the first flies, humming in a nook out of the wind, on the white warm-sunned wall, by the seashore. And he was blissfully watching sails bathed in the infinite softness of the blue Propontic Sea, and he believed himself alone in a delicious solitude, undisturbed by a single face, and, like the little dancing gnats of the white wall, luxuriated in sheer happiness of living, in the sunlight, in the calm. Suddenly, half-waking, Julian remembers that he is in the heart of Persia; that he is the Roman Emperor; that he alone is responsible for the lives of sixty thousand legionaries; that the gods are no more, that he has thrown down the altar of sacrifice. He shivers, and an icy chillness invades his body. He is falling, falling through the void, with nothing, nothing in the universe to arrest his fall. Perhaps an hour, perhaps twenty-four hours, may have elapsed in this kind of half-slumber. Then no longer dreaming, but in reality, he hears his faithful slave saying, as he thrusts his head under the door-curtain: "Cæsar, I am afraid of disturbing you, but I dare not disobey. It was your order that you should be immediately informed.... The chief Ariphas has just arrived in the camp...." "Ariphas!" exclaimed Julian, rising, "Ariphas!... Bring him, bring him here quickly!"