“Gently, child,” said the philosopher, in a superior tone.  “I was of exactly the same opinion till after sundown yesterday.  You know that the tendency of the school of philosophy to which I belong insists, above all, on a suspension of judgment; but if there is one thing which may be asserted with any dogmatic certainty—­”

But Melissa would hear no more.  She briefly but clearly explained to him who the maiden was whose hand he had held by the lake, and whom he had seen again at Serapion’s house; and as she went on his interruptions became fewer.  She did her utmost, with growing zeal, to destroy his luckless dream; but when the blood faded altogether from his colorless cheeks, and he clasped his hand over his brow as if to control some physical suffering, she recovered her self-command; the beautiful fear of a woman’s heart of ever giving useless pain, made her withhold from Philip what remained to be told of Agatha’s meeting with Alexander.

But, without this further revelation, Philip sat staring at the ground as if he were overwhelmed; and what hurt him so deeply was less the painful sense of having been cheated by such coarse cunning, than the annihilation of the treasured hopes which he had founded on the experiences of the past night.  He felt as though a brutal foot had trampled down the promise of future joys on which he had counted; his sister’s revelations had spoiled not merely his life on earth, but all eternity beyond the grave.  Where hope ends despair steps in; and Philip, with reckless vehemence, flung himself, as it were, into its arms.  His was an excitable nature; he had never thought of any one but himself, but labored with egotistical zeal to cultivate his own mind and outdo his fellows in the competition for learning.  The sullen words in which he called himself the most wretched man on earth, and the victim of the blackest ill-fortune, fell from his lips like stones.  He rudely repelled his sister’s encouraging words, like a sick child whose pain is the greater for being pitied, till at last she appealed to his sense of duty, reminding him that something must be done to rescue her father and Alexander.

“They also!  They also!” he cried.  “It falls on us all.  Blind Fate drives us all, innocent as we are, to death and despair, like the Tantalides.  What sin have you committed, gentle, patient child; or our father, or our happy-hearted and gifted brother; or I—­I myself?  Have those whom we call the rulers of the universe the right to punish me because I make use of the inquiring spirit they have bestowed on me?  Ah, and how well they know how to torture us!  They hate me for my learning, and so they turn my little errors to account to allow me to be cheated like a fool!  They are said to be just, and they behave like a father who disinherits his son because, as a man, he notes his parent’s weakness.  With tears and anguish have I striven for truth and knowledge.  There