and must
forego--if indeed it is true that you love me!"

"I love you, oh! I love you," she cried, beside herself, and seizing his
hands. "Perhaps you are right. I--my God what shall I do? Only do not ask
me yet, to speak the final yes or no. I cannot control myself to the
feeblest thought. You see, you see, how I am suffering!"

"Yes, I see it," he replied, looking compassionately at her pale face and
drawn brow. "And if it must be so, I say: till this evening then. Try to
rest now, and take care of yourself.--But then. . . ."

"Then, during the voyage, the flight, repeat to the abbess all you have
just said to me. She is a noble woman, and she, too, will learn to
understand and to love you, I am sure. She will retract the word I know.
. . ."

"What word?"

"My word, given to her, that I would not be yours. . . ."

"Till I had gone through the Esoteric tests?" exclaimed Orion with an
angry shrug. "Now go,--go and lie down. This hour, which should have been
the sweetest of our lives, a stranger has embittered and darkened. You
are not sure of yourself--nor I of myself. Anything more that we could
say now and here would lead to no good issue for either you or me. Go and
rest; sleep off your pain, and I--I will try to forget.--If you could but
see the turmoil in my soul!--But farewell till our next, more friendly--I
hardly dare trust myself to say our happier meeting."

He hastily turned away, but she called after him in sad lament: "Orion do
not forget--Orion, you know that I love you."

But he did not hear; he buried on with his head bowed over his breast,
down to the road, without reentering Rufinus' house.

CHAPTER VII.

When Orion reached home, wounded to the quick, he flung himself on a
divan. Paula had said that her heart was his indeed, but what a cool and
grudging love was this that would give nothing till it had insured its
future. And how could Paula have allowed a third person to come between
them, and rule her feelings and actions? She must have revealed to that
third person all that had previously passed between them--and it was for
this Melchite nun, his personal foe, that he was about to--it was enough
to drive him mad!--But he could not withdraw; he had pledged himself to
the brave old man to carry out this crazy enterprise. And in the place of
the lofty, noble mistress of his whole being, his fancy pictured Paula as
a tearful, vacillating, and cold-hearted woman.

There lay the maps a