she must still have a hard struggle and a long pilgrimage before she
could achieve this.

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 hurt him.

His torture was beginning to be quite unbearable; he fancied his soul
was actually wounded, riven, and torn; it had even occurred to him to
seize his sharpest sword and throw himself upon it like Ajax in his
fury--and like Cato--and so put a sudden end to this intolerable and
overwhelming misery.

He started up for--surely it was no illusion,