might indeed entail serious consequences; however, the matter might very
likely be quite other than this.

When he left his room the brooding heat that filled the house struck him
as peculiarly oppressive, and a painful feeling, closely resembling
shame, stole over him as he crossed the viridarium, and glanced at the
grass from which--thanks to Paula's ill-meant warning--he had carefully
brushed away his foot-marks before daybreak. How cowardly, how base,
it all was The best of all in life: honor, self-respect, the proud
consciousness of being an honest man--all staked and all lost for nothing
at all! He could have slapped his own face or cried aloud like a child
that has broken its most treasured toy. But of what use was all this?
What was done could not be undone; and now he must keep his wits about
him so as to remain, in the eyes of others at least, what he had always
been, low as he had fallen in his own.

It was scorchingly hot in the enclosed garden-plot, surrounded by
buildings, and open to the sun; not a human creature was in sight; the
house seemed dead. The gaudy flag-staffs and trellis-work, and the
pillars of the verandah, which had all been newly painted in honor of his
return and were still wreathed with garlands, exhaled a smell, to him
quite sickening, of melting resin, drying varnish and faded flowers.
Though there was no breath of air the atmosphere quivered, as it seemed
from the fierce rays of the sun, which were reflected like arrows from
everything around him. The butterflies and dragonflies appeared to Orion
to move their wings more languidly as they hovered over the plants and
flowers, the very fountain danced up more lazily and not so high as
usual: everything about him was hot, sweltering, oppressive; and the man
who had always been so independent and looked up to, who for years had
been free to career through life uncontrolled, and guarded by every good