were as motionless as though they were dead. Grief, anxiety and alarms
seemed to have passed over them with a paralysing hand and had left their
trace there. He looked like a man weary unto death, and still living only
because fate had denied him the grace to die. Indeed, he had often been
taken for dead by his family when he had dipped too freely into a certain
little blood-stone box to take too many of the white opium-pills, one of
which he placed between his colorless lips at long intervals, even during
his game of draughts.

He lifted each piece slowly, like a sleeper with his eyes half shut; and
yet his opponent could not hold her own against his wary tactics and was
defeated by him now for the third time, though her uncle himself called
her a good player. It was easy to read in her high, smooth brow and
dark-blue eyes with their direct gaze, that she could think clearly and
decisively, and also feel deeply. But she seemed wilful too, and
contradictory--at any rate to-day; for when Orion pointed out some move
to her she rarely took his advice, but with set lips, pushed the piece
according to her own, rarely wiser, judgment. It was quite plain that she
was refractory under the guidance of this--especially of this counsellor.

The bystanders could not fail to see the girl's repellent manner and
Orion's eager attempts to propitiate her; and for this reason Neforis was
glad when, just as her husband had finished the third game, and had
pushed the men together on the board with the back of his hand, his
chamberlain reminded him that the Arab was without, awaiting his pleasure
with growing impatience. The Mukaukas answered only by a sign, drew his
long caftan of the finest wool closer around him, and pointed to the
doors and the open roof. The rest of the party had long felt the chill of
the damp night air that blew through the room from the river, but knowing
that the father suffered more from heat than from anything, they had all
willingly endured the draught. Now, however, Orion called the slaves, and
before the strangers were admitted the doors were closed and the roof
covered.

Paula rose; the governor lay motionless and kept his eyes apparently
closed; he must, however, have seen what was going forward through an
imperceptible slit, for he turned first to Paula and then to the other
women saying: "Is it not strange?--Most old folks, like children, seek
the sun, and love to sit, as the others play, in its heat. Wh