pungent odor, and she drew the coverlet over her head to escape this new
torment; but she soon cast it off again, for she thought she should be
suffocated under it. An intolerable restlessness took possession of her,
while the pain in her injured foot throbbed madly, the cut in her head
seemed to burn, and her temples beat with an agonizing headache that
contracted the muscles of her eyes. Every nerve in her body, every
thought of her brain was a separate torture, and at the same time she
felt herself without a stay, without protection, and wholly abandoned to
some cruel influence, which tossed and tore her soul as the storm tosses
the crowns of the palm-trees.

Without tears, incapable of lying still and yet punished for the
slightest movement by some fresh pain, racked in every joint, not strong
enough in her bewilderment to carry through a single connected thought,
and yet firmly convinced that the perfume she was forced to inhale at
every breath was poisoning her--destroying her--driving her mad--she
lifted her damaged foot out of bed, dragged the other after it, and sat
up on her couch regardless of the pain she felt, and the warnings of the
physician. Her long hair fell dishevelled over her face, her arms, and
her hands, in which she held her aching head; and in this new attitude
the excitement of her brain and heart took fresh development.

She sat gazing at the floor with a freezing gaze, and bitter enmity
towards her sister, hatred towards Pollux, contempt for her father's
miserable weakness, and her own utter blindness, rang wild changes in her
soul. Outside all lay in peaceful calm, and from the house in which
Paulina lived the evening breeze now and again bore the pure tones of a
pious hymn upon her ear. Selene never heeded it, but as the same air
wafted the scent of the flowers in her face even stronger than before,
she clutched her hair in her fingers and pulled it so violently that she
actually groaned with the pain she gave herself.

The question as to whether her hair was less abundant and beautiful than
her sister's suddenly occurred to her, and like a flash in the darkness
the wish shot through her soul that she could fling Arsinoe to the ground
by the hair, with the hand which was now hurting herself.

That perfume! that horrible perfume!

She could bear it no longer. She stood up on her uninjured foot, and with
very short steps she dragged herself half crying to the window, and flung
the noseg