He was asleep, worn out by heat and fatigue; and in a dream he saw Paula lying on a couch strewn with roses while all about her sounded wonderful heart-ensnaring music; and the couch was not solid but blue water, gently moving:  he went towards her and suddenly a large black eagle swooped down on him, flapped his wings in his face and when, half-blinded, he put his hand to his eyes the bird pecked the roses as a hen picks millet and barley.  Then he was angry, rushed at the eagle, and tried to clutch him with his hands; but his feet seemed rooted to the ground, and the more he struggled to move freely the more firmly he was dragged backwards.  He fought like a madman against the hindering force, and suddenly it released him.  He was still under this impression when he woke, streaming with perspiration, and opened his eyes.  By his couch stood his mother who had laid her hand on his feet to rouse him.

She looked pale and anxious and begged him to come quickly to his father who was much disturbed, and wished to speak with him.  Then she hurried away.

While he hastily arranged his hair and had his shoes clasped he felt vexed that, under the influence of that foolish dream, and still half asleep, he had let his mother go before ascertaining what the circumstances were that had given rise to his father’s anxiety.  Had it anything to do with the incidents of the past night?  No.—­If he had been suspected his mother would have told him and warned him.  It must refer to something else.  Perhaps the old merchant’s stalwart headman had died of his wounds, and his father wished to send him—­Orion—­across the Nile to the Arab viceroy to obtain forgiveness for the murder of a Moslem, actually within the precincts of the governor’s house.  This fatal blow might indeed entail serious consequences; however, the matter might very likely be quite other than this.

When he left his room the brooding heat that filled the house struck him as peculiarly oppressive, and a painful feeling, closely resembling shame, stole over him as he crossed the viridarium, and glanced at the grass from which—­thanks to Paula’s ill-meant warning—­he had carefully brushed away his foot-marks before daybreak.  How cowardly, how base, it all was The best of all in life:  honor, self-respect, the proud consciousness of being an honest man—­all staked and all lost for nothing at all!  He could have slapped his own face or cried aloud like a child that has broken its most treasured toy.  But of what use was all this?  What was done could not be undone; and now he must keep his wits about him so as to remain, in the eyes of others at least, what he had always been, low as he had fallen in his own.