that she abandoned herself to the violent agitation that mastered her.  Then with a great effort her instinct and determination to do right enabled her to control it; she pushed him from her decisively but not ungently, and then, with some emotion and an arch sweetness which he had never before seen in her, and which charmed him even more than her noble and lofty pride, she said, threatening him with her finger.

“Take care, Orion!  Now I have the stone and the setting; yes, that very setting.  Beware of the consequences, rash man!”

“Not at all.  Say rather:  Fool, who at last has succeeded in doing something rational,” he replied joyfully.  “What I have brought you is not a gift; it is your own.  To you it can be neither more nor less than it was before; but to me it has gained inestimably in value since it places my honor, perhaps my life even, in your keeping; I am in your power as completely as the humblest slave in the palace is in that of the Emperor.  Keep the gem, and use it and this fateful gold trifle till the day shall come when my weal and woe are one with yours.”

“For your dead father’s sake,” she answered, coloring deeply, “your weal lies already very near my heart.  Am not I, who brought upon you your father’s curse, bound indeed to help you to free yourself from the burden of it?  And it may perhaps be in my power to do so, Orion, if you do not scorn to listen to the counsels of an ignorant girl?”

“Speak,” he cried; but she did not reply immediately.  She only begged him to come into the garden with her; the close atmosphere of the room had become intolerable to both, and when they got out and Katharina had first caught sight of them their flushed cheeks had not escaped her watchful eye.

In the open air, a scarcely perceptible breath from the river moderated the noontide heat, and then Paula found courage to tell him what Philippus had called his apprehension in life.  It was not new to him; indeed it fully answered to the principles he had laid down for the future.  He accepted it gratefully:  “Life is a function, a ministry, a duty!” the words were a motto, a precept that should aid him in carrying out his plans.

“And the device,” he exclaimed, “will be doubly precious to me as having come from your lips.—­But I no longer need its warning.  The wisest and most practical axioms of conduct never made any man the better.  Who does not bring a stock of them with him when he quits school for the world at large?  Precepts are of no use unless, in the voyage of life, a manly will holds the rudder.  I have called on mine, and it will steer me to the goal, for a bright guiding star lights the pilot on his way.  You know that star; it is. . . .”

“It is what you call your love,” she interposed, with a deep blush.—­Your love for me, and I will trust it.”

“You will!” he cried passionately.  “You allow me to hope. . . .”

“Yes, yes, hope!” she again broke in, “but meanwhile. . . .”