“And you will perhaps consent,” replied the physician, to whom Paula at this moment, for the first time since his heart had glowed with love for her, did not seem to be quite what a man looks for in the woman he adores.  Hitherto he had seen and heard nothing that was not high-minded and worthy of her; but her last words had, been spoken with vehement and indignant irony—­and in Philip’s opinion irony, blame which was intended to wound and not to improve its object, was unbecoming in a noble woman.  The scornful laugh, with which she had triumphantly ended her speech, had opened as it were a wide abyss between his mind and hers.  He, as he freely confessed to himself, was of a coarser and humbler grain than Paula, and he was apt to be satirical oftener than was right.  She had been wont to dislike this habit in him; he had been glad that she did; it answered to the ideal he had formed of what the woman he loved should be.  But now she had turned satirical; and her irony was no jest of the lips.  It sprang, full of passion, from her agitated soul; this it was that grieved the leech who knew human nature, and at the same time roused his apprehensions.  Paula read his disapproval in his face, and felt that there was a deep significance in his words And you will perhaps consent.”

“Men are vexed,” thought she, “when, after they have decisively expressed an opinion, we women dare unhesitatingly to assert a different one,” so, as she would on no account hurt the feelings of the friend to whom she owed so much, she said kindly: 

“I do not care to enquire into the meaning of your strange prognostication.  Thank God, by your kindness and care I have severed every tie that could have bound me to my poor uncle’s son!—­Now we will drop the subject; we have said too much about him already.”

“That is quite my opinion,” replied Philippus.  “And, indeed, I would beg you quite to forget my ‘perhaps.’  I live wholly in the present and am no prophet; but I foresee, nevertheless, that Orion will make every effort, cost what it may. . . .”

“Well?”

“To approach you again, to win your forgiveness, to touch your heart, to. . . .”

“Let him dare” exclaimed Paula lifting her hand with a threatening gesture.

“And when he, gifted as he is in every way, has found his better self again and can come forward purified and worthy of the approbation of the best. . . .”

“Still I will never, never forget how he has sinned and what he brought upon me!—­Do you think that I have already forgotten your conversation with Neforis?  You ask nothing of your friends but honest feeling akin to your own,—­and what is it that repels me from Orion but feeling?  Thousands have altered their behavior, but—­answer me frankly—­surely not what we mean by their feeling?”