ave worked silently, giving no sign, and when the result was
obtained he would have presented it to the world with his coldest and
most sarcastic stare, content in the thought that he had satisfied
himself, and demanding no appreciation from others. To feel that he had
succeeded was then the most delicious part of success. Now, he was so
changed that he could not imagine success as being at all worth having
unless Hermione were there to share it. No one else would do, and
something of his exclusiveness might still be found in his desire for
her sympathy, and for that of no one else. But the transformation was
very great, and as he had realized it, he had understood the extent of
his love for his cousin. The sensation was wholly novel, and he again
asked himself what it meant, half doubting its reality, but never
doubting that it would last forever,--in the highly contradictory spirit
of a man who is in love for the first time.

Then Hermione arrived, and Paul awoke to find himself between two fires.
To contemplate the possibility of not marrying Hermione, when she was in
the same city, when he must see her and hear her voice every day of his
life, was now out of the question. His love had grown ten times stronger
in the separation of the last months, and he knew that it was now
useless to think of putting it away. With a modesty not found in men who
have loved many women, Paul discarded the idea that Hermione's happiness
was as deeply concerned as his own. He did not understand how very much
she loved him, and it would have seemed to his softened soul an
outrageous piece of arrogance to suppose that she could not be quite as
happy with some one else as with himself. But of his own feelings he had
no doubt. It was perfectly clear that without Hermione life could never
be worth living, and he found himself face to face with a most difficult
question,--a true dilemma, from which there could be no issue unless he
found his brother, or the evidences of his brother's death.

If the search proved fruitless, he was still in the position of a man
who is liable to suspicion, and he had firmly resolved that he would not
permit the woman he loved to marry a man who could be accused, however
unjustly, of the crime of murder. On the other hand, he knew that while
she was present in Constantinople he was not master of his feelings,
hardly of his words; and he could not go away: first, because to go away
would be to leave the search wh