pturous hopes had sprung
once more in his breast. Ecstatically happy, like a man intoxicated, he
had, by her own desire, accompanied her into her sitting-room, and
then--and there. . . .

Poor, disappointed man, sitting on the divan in a dark corner of the
spacious room! In his soul hitherto the intellect had alone made itself
heard, the voice of the heart had never been listened to.

How he had found his way home he never knew. All he remembered was that,
in the course of duty, he had gone into the house of a man whose
wife--the mother of several children--he had left at noon in a dying
state; that he had seen her a corpse, surrounded by loud but sincere
mourners; that he had gone on his way, weighed down by their grief and
his own, and that he had entered his friend's rooms rather than his own,
to feel safe from himself. Life had no charm, no value for him now;
still, he felt ashamed to think that a woman could thus divert him from
the fairest aims of life, that he could allow her to destroy the peace of
mind he needed to enable him to carry out his calling in the spirit of
his friend Rufinus. He knew his house-mate well and felt that he would
only pour vitriol into his wounds, but it was best so. The old man had
already often tried to bring down Paula's image from its high pedestal in
his soul, but always in vain; and even now he should not succeed. He
would mar nothing, scatter nothing to the winds, tread nothing in the
dust but the burning passion, the fevered longing for her, which had
fired his blood ever since that night when he had vanquished the raving
Masdakite. That old sage by the table, on whose stern, cold features the
light fell so brightly, was the very man to accomplish such a work of
destruction, and Philippus awaited his first words as a wounded man
watches the surgeon heating the iron with which to cauterize the sore.

Poor disappointed wretch, sorely in need of a healing hand!

He lay back on the divan, and saw how his friend leaned over his scroll
as if listening, and fidgeted up and down in his arm-chair.

It was clear that Horapollo was uneasy at Philippus' long silence, and
his pointed eyebrows, raised high on his brow, plainly showed that he was
drawing his own conclusions from it--no doubt the right ones. The peace
must soon be broken, and Philippus awaited the attack. He was prepared
for the worst; but how could he bring himself to make his torturer's task
easy for him. Thus many minutes