At the same time her eye sought to meet Orion’s.  And thus, in the very extremity of danger, they enjoyed a solemn moment of the purest, deepest happiness.  Paula’s eyes were moist with grateful tenderness, when Orion exclaimed: 

“You have heard from her own lips what makes the greatest bliss of my life.  The noble daughter of Thomas is my promised bride!”

There was a murmur among the Jacobite judges.  ’Till this moment several of them, oppressed by the heat, had sat dreaming with their heads sunk on their breasts, but now they were suddenly as wide-awake and alert as though a jet of cold water had been turned on to them, and one cried out:  “And your father, young man?  You have forgotten him in a hurry!  What would he have said to such a disgrace to his blood as your marriage to a Melchite, the daughter of those who caused your two brothers to be murdered?  Oh! if the dead could. . . .”

“He blessed our union on his death-bed,” Orion put in.

“Did he, indeed?” asked another Jacobite with sarcastic scorn.  “Then the patriarch was in the right when he refused to let the priests follow his corpse.  That I should live to be witness to such crimes!”

But such words fell on the ears of the enraptured pair like the chirping of crickets.  They felt, they cared for nothing but what this blissful moment had brought them, and never suspected that Paula’s glad avowal had sealed her death-warrant.

The wrath of the Jacobite faction now hastened the end.  The prosecutor, an Arab, now represented how many Moslems had lost their lives in the affair of the nuns, and once more read Orion’s letter.  His Christian colleagues tried to prove that this document could only refer to the flight, so ingeniously plotted, of the sisters; and now something quite new and unlooked-for occurred, which gave a fresh turn to the proceedings:  the old man interrupted the Kadi to make a statement.  At this Paula’s confidence rose again for the last speaker had somewhat shaken it.  She felt sure that the tried friend and adoptive father of her faithful Philippus would take her part.

But what was this?

The old man seemed to measure her height in a glance which struck to her heart with its fierce enmity, and then he said deliberately: 

“On the morning of the nuns’ flight the accused, Paula, went to the convent and there tolled the bell.  Contradict me if you can, proud prefect’s daughter; but I warn you beforehand, that in that case, I shall be compelled to bring forward fresh charges.”

At this the horror-stricken girl pictured to herself the widow and daughter of Rufinus at her side on the condemned bench before the judges, and felt that denial would drag her friends to destruction with her; with quivering lips she confirmed the old man’s statement.

“And why did you toll the bell?” asked the Kadi.

“To help them,” replied Paula.  “They are my fellow-believers, and I love them.”