ld not sleep, and when she joined
her new friends next morning she told herself that here, if anywhere, was
the place where she might recover her lost peace, but that she must still
have a hard struggle and a long pilgrimage before she could achieve this.

ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:

In whom some good quality or other may not be discovered
Life is not a banquet

THE BRIDE OF THE NILE

By Georg Ebers

Volume 5.

CHAPTER XVII.

During all these hours Orion had been in the solitude of his own rooms.
Next to them was little Mary's sleeping-room; he had not seen the child
again since leaving his father's death-bed. He knew that she was lying
there in a very feverish state, but he could not so far command himself
as to enquire for her. When, now and again, he could not help thinking of
her, he involuntarily clenched his fists. His soul was shaken to the
foundations; desperate, beside himself, incapable of any thought but that
he was the most miserable man on earth--that his father's curse had
blighted him--that nothing could undo what had happened--that some cruel
and inexorable power had turned his truest friend into a foe and had
sundered them so completely that there was no possibility of atonement or
of moving him to a word of pardon or a kindly glance--he paced the long
room from end to end, flinging himself on his knees at intervals before
the divan, and burying his burning face in the soft pillows. From time to
time he could pray, but each time he broke off; for what Power in Heaven
or on earth could unseal those closed eyes and stir that heart to beat
again, that tongue to speak--could vouchsafe to him, the outcast, the one
thing for which his soul thirsted and without which he thought he must
die: Pardon, pardon, his father's pardon! Now and then he struck his
forehead and heart like a man demented, with cries of anguish, curses and
lamentations.

About midnight--it was but just twelve hours since that fearful scene,
and to him it seemed like as many days--he threw himself on the couch,
dressed as he was in the dark mourning garments, which he had half torn
off in his rage and despair, and broke out into such loud groans that he
himself was almost frightened in the silence of the night. Full of
self-pity and horror at his own deep grief, he turned his face to the
wall to screen his eyes from the clear, full moon, which only showed him
things he did not want to see, while it hur