. How little could man do against the iron
force of fate! That could not be forefended by hard work; there was
nothing for it but to take up a right attitude, and to confront and meet
it with dignity. The bark of Orion's existence lacked ballast; in fine
weather it drifted wherever the breeze carried it, He himself had taken
care to equip it well; and if only the chances of life should freight it
heavily--very heavily, and fling it on the rocks, then Orion might show
who and what he was; he, Haschim, firmly believed that his character
would prove itself admirable. It was in the hour of shipwreck that a man
showed his worth.

Here the physician interrupted him to prove that it was not Fate, as
imagined by Moslems, but man himself who guided the bark of life--but at
this moment Paula looked into the room, and he broke off. The merchant
bowed profoundly, Philippus respectfully, but with more embarrassment
than might have been expected from the general confidence of his manner.
For some years he had been a daily visitor in the governor's house, and
after carefully ignoring Paula on her first arrival, since Dame Neforis
had taken to treating her so coolly he drew her out whenever he had the
opportunity. Her conversations with him had now become dear and even
necessary to her, though at first his dry, cutting tone had displeased
her, and he had often driven her into a corner in a way that was hard
to bear. They kept her mind alert in a circle which never busied itself
with anything but the trivial details of family life in the decayed
city, or with dogmatic polemics--for the Mukaukas seldom or never took
part in the gossip of the women.

The leech never talked of daily events, but expressed his views as to
other and graver subjects in life, or in books with which they were both
familiar; and he had the art of eliciting replies from her which he met
with wit and acumen. By degrees she had become accustomed to his bold
mode of thought, sometimes, it is true, too recklessly expressed; and
the gifted girl now preferred a discussion with him to any other form of
conversation, recognizing that a childlike and supremely unselfish soul
animated this thoughtful reservoir of all knowledge. Almost everything
she did displeased her uncle's wife, and so, of course, did her familiar
intercourse with this man, whose appearance certainly had in it nothing
to attract a young girl.--The physician to a family of rank was there to
keep its memb