lone; he ground his teeth with rage. Paula had betrayed
him in spite of her promise, and how mean was her woman's cunning! She
could be silent before the judges--yes. Silent in all confidence now, to
the very last; but the nurse, her mouthpiece, had already put Nilus, the
keenest and most important member of the court, in possession of the
evidence which spoke for her and against him. It was shocking,
disgraceful! Base and deliberately malicious treachery. But the end was
not yet: he still was free to act and to ward off the spiteful stroke by
a counterthrust. How it should be dealt was clear from Perpetua's
statement; but his conscience, his instincts and long habits of
submission to what was right, good, and fitting held him back. Not only
had he never himself done a base or a mean action; he loathed it in
another, and the only thing he could do to render Paula's perfidy
harmless was, as he could not deny, original and bold, but at the same
time detestable and shameful.

Still, he could not and he would not succumb in this struggle. Time
pressed. Long reflection was impossible; suddenly he felt carried away by
a fierce and mad longing to fight it out--he felt as he had felt on a
race-day in the hippodrome, when he had driven his own quadriga ahead of
all the rest.

Onwards, then, onwards; and if the chariot were wrecked, if the horses
were killed, if his wheels maimed his comrades overthrown in the
arena-still, onwards, onwards!

A few hasty steps brought him to the lodge of the gate-keeper, a sturdy
old man who had held his post for forty years. He had formerly been a
locksmith and it still was part of his duty to undertake the repairs of
the simple household utensils. Orion as a youth had been a beautiful and
engaging boy and a great favorite with this worthy man; he had delighted
in sitting in his little room and handing him the tools for his work. He
himself had remarkable mechanical facility and had been the old man's apt
pupil; nay, he had made such progress as to be able to carve pretty
little boxes, prayer-book cases, and such like, and provide them with
locks, as gifts to his parents on their birth days--a festival always
kept with peculiar solemnity in Egypt, and marked by giving and receiving
presents. He understood the use of tools, and he now hastily selected
such as he needed. On the window-ledge stood a bunch of flowers which he
had ordered for Paula the day before, and which he had forgotten to fetch