mage from her fancy, forced to remind herself that he was
now standing face to face with that other, and was looking at Paula as, a
few days since, he had looked at her, the anguish of her soul was
doubled. And was Paula only half as happy as she had been in that hour of
supreme bliss? Ah! how her heart ached! She longed to leap over the
hedge--she could have rushed into the house and flung herself between
Paula and Orion.

Still, there she sat; restless but without moving; wholly under the
dominion of evil thoughts, among which a good one rarely and timidly
intruded, with her eyes fixed on Rufinus' dwelling. It stood in the broad
sunshine as silent as death, as if all were sleeping. In the garden, too,
all was motionless but the thin jet of water, which danced up from the
marble tank with a soft and fitful, but monotonous tinkle, while
butterflies, dragonflies, bees, and beetles, whose hum she could not
hear, seemed to circle round the flowers without a sound. The birds must
be asleep, for not one was to be seen or broke the oppressive stillness
by a chirp or a twitter. The chariot at the door might have been
spellbound; the driver had dismounted, and he, with the other slaves, had
stretched himself in the narrow strips of shade cast by the pillars of
the verandah; their chins buried in their breasts, they spoke not a word.
The horses alone were stirring-flicking off the flies with their flowing
tails, or turning to bite the burning stings they inflicted. This now and
then lifted the pole, and as the chariot crunched backwards a few inches,
the charioteer growled out a sleepy "Brrr."

Katharina had laid a large leaf on her head for protection against the
sun; she did not dare use a parasol or a hat for fear of being seen. The
shade cast by the shrubs was but scanty, the noontide heat was torment;
still, though minute followed minute and one-quarter of an hour after
another crept by at a snail's pace, she was far too much excited to be
sleepy. She needed no dial to tell her the time; she knew exactly how
late it was as one shadow stole to this point and another to that, and,
by risking the danger to her eyes of glancing up at the sun, she could
make doubly sure.

It was now within three-quarters of an hour of noon, and in that house
all was as still as before; the Patriarch, however, might be expected to
be punctual, and she had done nothing towards dressing but putting on
those gilt sandals. This brought her to swift