Opposition from the town-senate was also to be looked for, since the deceased Mukaukas had pronounced this measure unjust and detrimental to the common welfare.  The evicted orthodox nuns were to be taken into various Jacobite convents as lay sisters similar cases had already been known; but the abbess, whose superior intellect, high rank, and far-reaching influence might, if she were left free to act, easily rouse the prelates of the East to oppose Benjamin, was to be conveyed to a remote convent in Ethiopia, whence no flight or return was possible.

Katharina’s report took but few minutes, and she gave it with apparent indifference; what could the suppression of an orthodox cloister, and the dispersion of its heretic sisterhood, matter to her, or to Orion, whose brothers had fallen victims to Melchite fanaticism?  Orion did not betray his deep interest in all he heard, and when at length Katharina rose and pointed feebly to the door, all she said, as though she were vexed at having wasted so much time, was:  “That, on the whole, is all.”

“All?” asked Orion unlocking the door.

“Certainly, all,” she repeated uneasily.  “What I meant to ask—­whether I ever know it or not—­it does not matter.—­It would be better perhaps-yes, that is all.—­Let me go.”

But he did not obey her.

“Ask,” he said kindly.  “I will answer you gladly.”

“Gladly?” she retorted, with an incredulous shrug.  “In point of fact you ought to feel uncomfortable whenever you see me; but things do not always turn out as they ought, in Memphis or in the world; for what do you men care what becomes of a poor girl like me?  Do not imagine that I mean to reproach you; God forbid!  I do not even owe you a grudge.  If anyone can live such a thing down I can.  Do not you think so?  Everything is admirably arranged for me; I cannot fail to do well.  I am very rich, and not ugly, and I shall have a hundred suitors yet.  Oh, I am a most enviable creature!  I have had one lover already, and the next will be more faithful, at any rate, and not throw me over so ruthlessly as the first.—­Do not you think so?”

“I hope so,” said Oriole gravely.  “Bitter as the cup is that you offer me to drink. . .”

“Well?”

“I can only repeat that I must even drink it, since the fault was mine.  Nothing would so truly gladden me as to be able to atone in some degree for my sin against you.”

“Oh dear no!” she scornfully threw in.  “Our hopes shall not be fixed so high as that!  All is at an end between us, and if you ever were anything to me, you are nothing to me now—­absolutely nothing.  One hour in the past we had in common; it was short indeed, but to me—­would you believe it?—­a very great matter.  It aged the young creature, whom you, but yesterday, still regarded as a mere child—­that much I know—­with amazing rapidity; aye, and made a worse woman of her than you can fancy.”