friends but honest feeling akin to
your own,--and what is it that repels me from Orion but feeling?
Thousands have altered their behavior, but--answer me frankly--surely not
what we mean by their feeling?"

"Yes, that too," said the leech with stern gravity. "Feeling, too, may
change. Or do you range yourself on the side of the Arab merchant and his
fellow-Moslems, who regard man as the plaything of a blind Fate?--But our
spiritual teachers tell us that the evil to which we are predestined,
which is that born into the world with us, may be averted, turned and
guided to good by what they call spiritual regeneration. But who that
lives in the tumult of the world can ever succeed in 'killing himself' in
their sense of the word, in dying while yet he lives, to be born again, a
new man? The penitent's garb does not suit the stature of an Orion;
however, there is for him another way of returning to the path he has
lost. Fortune has hitherto offered her spoilt favorite so much pleasure,
that sheer enjoyment has left him no time to think seriously on life
itself; now she is showing him its graver side, she is inviting him to
reflect; and if he only finds a friend to give him the counsel which my
father left in a letter for me, his only child, as a youth--and if he is
ready to listen, I regard him as saved."

"And that word of counsel--what is it?" asked Paula with interest.

"To put it briefly, it is this: Life is not a banquet spread by fate for
our enjoyment, but a duty which we are bound to fulfil to the best of our
power. Each one must test his nature and gifts, and the better he uses
them for the weal and benefit of the body of which he was born a member,
the higher will his inmost gladness be, the more certainly will he attain
to a beautiful peace of mind, the less terrors will Death have for him.
In the consciousness of having sown seed for eternity he will close his
eyes like a faithful steward at the end of each day, and of the last hour
vouchsafed to him on earth. If Orion recognizes this, if he submits to
accept the duties imposed on him by existence, if he devotes himself to
them now for the first time to the best of his powers, a day may come
when I shall look up to him with respect--nay, with admiration. The
shipwreck of which the Arab spoke has overtaken him. Let us see how he
will save himself from the waves, and behave when he is cast on shore."

"Let us see!" repeated Paula, "and wish that he may find such