gue! Mother--Mother Neforis! Your name
means kindness, but you can be cruel, bitterly cruel!"

Still he drew her fondly to him, and kissed her hair and brow and cheeks
with eager haste, in a vehemence of feeling which came over him like a
revulsion after the shock he had gone through; and when they parted he
had given her leave to negotiate for little Katharina's hand on his
behalf, and she had promised in return that it should be not on the
morrow but the day after at soonest. This delay seemed to him a sort of
victory and when he found himself alone and reflected on what he had done
in yielding to his mother, though his heart bled from the wounds of which
he himself knew not the depth, he rejoiced that he had not bound Paula by
any closer tie. His eyes had indeed told her much, but the word "Love"
had not passed his lips--and yet that was what it came to.--But surely a
cousin might be allowed to kiss the hand of a lovely relation. She was a
desirable woman--ah, how desirable!--and must ever be: but to quarrel
with his parents for the sake of a girl, were she Aphrodite herself, or
one of the Muses or the Graces--that was impossible! There were thousands
of pretty women in the world, but only one mother; and how often had his
heart beat high and won another heart, taken all it had to give, and then
easily and quickly recovered its balance.

This time however, it seemed more deeply hit than on former occasions;
even the lovely Persian slave for whose sake he had committed the wildest
follies while yet scarcely more than a school-boy--even the bewitching
Heliodora at Constantinople for whom he still had a tender thought, had
not agitated him so strongly. It was hard to give up this Paula; but
there was no help for it. To-morrow he must do his best to establish
their intercourse on a friendly and fraternal footing; for he could have
no hope that she would be content to accept his love only, like the
gentle Heliodora, who was quite her equal in birth. Life would have been
fair, unutterably fair, with this splendid creature by his side! If only
he could take her to the Capital he felt sure that all the world would
stand still to turn round and gaze at her. And if she loved him--if she
met him open-armed. . . . Oh, why had spiteful fate made her a Melchite? But
then, alas, alas! There must surely be something wrong with her nature
and temper; would she not otherwise have been able in two years to gain
the love, instead of the