He penned the lines rapidly; and as he did so he felt, he knew not why, an excited thrill, as though every word he threw off was a blow aimed at Paula.  Last night he had intended to send the costly jewel to the handsome widow in a suitable setting; but now it would be madly imprudent to order such a thing.  He must send it away at once; he had hastened to pack it up with the verses, with his own hand, and entrusted it to Chusar, a horsedealer’s groom from Constantinople, who had brought his Pannonian steeds to Memphis.  He had himself seen off this trustworthy messenger, who could speak no Egyptian and very little Greek, and when his horse was lost to sight in the dust of the road leading to Alexandria he had returned home in a calmer mood.  Ships were constantly putting to sea from that port for Constantinople, and Chusar was enjoined to sail by the first that should be leaving.  At least the odious deed should not have been committed in vain; and yet he would have given a year of his life if now he could but know that it had never been done.

“Impossible!” and “Curse it!” were the words he had most frequently repeated in the course of his retrospect during the past night and morning.  How he had had to rush and hurry under the broiling sun! and the sense of being compelled to do so for mere concealment’s sake seemed to him—­who had never in his life before done anything that he could not justify in the eyes of honest men—­so humiliating, that it brought the sweat to his burning brow.  He—­Orion—­to dread discovery as a thief!  It was inconceivable, and he was afraid, positively afraid for the first time since his boyhood.  His fortunate star, which in the Capital had shone on him so brightly and benevolently, seemed to have proved faithless in this ruinous hole!  What had that Persian girl taken into her crazy head that she must rush upon him like some furious beast of prey?  He had been bound to her once, no doubt, by a transient passion—­and what youth of his age was blind to the charms of a pretty slave-girl?  She had been a lovely child, and it was a vexation, nay a grief to him, that she should have been so shamefully punished.  If she should recover, and he could have prayed that she might, it would of course be his part to provide for her—­of course.  To be just, he could not but confess that she indeed had good reason to hate him:  but Paula?  He had shown her nothing but kindness and yet how unhesitatingly, how openly she had displayed her enmity.  He could see her now with the name “murderer” on her quivering lips; the word had stung him like a lance-thrust.  What a hideous, degrading and unjust accusation lay in that exclamation!  Should he submit to it unrevenged?