The matron clasped her hands and sobbed out: 

“Anything, everything you wish!  But Father, Orion, our faith!—­ And then, merciful Saviour, that poor little Katharina!”

“Katharina!” repeated the sick man, and his feeble lips parted in a compassionate smile.  “Our boy and the water—­water—­you know what I would say.”

Then his eyes began to sparkle more brightly and he said in a low voice, but still eagerly, as though death were yet far from him: 

“My name is George, the son of the Mukaukas; I am the great Mukaukas and our family—­all fine men of a proud race; all:  My father, my uncle, our lost sons, and Orion here—­all palms and oaks!  And shall a dwarf, a mere blade of rice be grafted on to the grand old stalwart stock?  What would come of that?—­Oh, ho! a miserable little brood!  But Paula!  The cedar of Lebanon—­Paula; she would give new life to the grand old race.”

“But our faith, our faith,” moaned Neforis.  “And you, Orion, do you even know what her feeling is towards you?”

“Yes and no.  Let that rest for the present,” said the youth, who was deeply moved.  “Oh Father! if I only knew that your blessing. . .”

“The Faith, the Faith,” interrupted the Mukaukas in a broken voice.

“I will be true to my own!” cried Orion, raising his father’s hand to his lips.  “But think, picture to yourself, how Paula and I would reign in this house, and how another generation would grow up in it worthy of the great Mukaukas and his ancestors!”

“I see it, I see it,” murmured the sick man sinking back on his pillows, unconscious.

Philippus was immediately called in, and, with him, little Mary came weeping into the room.  The physician’s efforts to revive the sufferer were presently successful; again the sick man opened his eyes, and spoke more distinctly and loudly than before: 

“There is a perfume of musk.  It is the fragrance that heralds the Angel of Death.”

After this he lay still and silent for a long time.  His eyes were closed, but his brows were knit and showed that he was thinking with a painful effort.  At length, with a sigh, he said, almost inaudibly:  “So it was and so it is:  The Greek oppressed my people with arbitrary cruelty as if we were dogs; the Moslem, too, is a stranger, but he is just.  That which happened it was out of my power to prevent; and it is well, it is very well that it turned out so.—­Very well,” he repeated several times, and then he shivered and said with a groan: 

“My feet are so cold!  But never mind, never mind, I like to be cool.”