He took Mary's head between his hands, kissed her forehead with impetuous
affection, and then pushed her towards her governess, who dutifully led
her away.

When Orion found himself alone, he leaned against a tree and groaned like
a wounded wild beast. His heart was full to bursting.

"Gone, gone! Thrown away, lost! The best on earth!" He laid his hands
on the tree-stem and pressed his head against it till it hurt him. He
did not know how to contain himself for misery and self-reproach. He
felt like a man who has been drunk and has reduced his own house to ashes
in his intoxication. How all this could have come to pass he now no
longer knew. After his nocturnal ride he had caused Nilus the treasurer
to be waked, and had charged him to liberate Hiram secretly. But it was
the sight of his stricken father that first brought him completely to his
sober senses. By his bed-side, death in its terrible reality had stared
him in the face, and he had felt that he could not bear to see that
beloved parent die till he had made his peace with Paula, won her
forgiveness, brought her whom his father loved so well into his presence,
and besought his blessing on her and on himself.

Twice he had hastened from the chamber of suffering to her room, to
entreat her to hear him, but in vain; and now, how terrible had their
parting been! She was hard, implacable, cruel; and as he recalled her
person and individuality as they had struck him before their quarrel,
he was forced to confess that there was something in her present behavior
which was not natural to her. This inhuman severity in the beautiful
woman whose affection had once been his, and who, but now, had flung his
flowers into the water, had not come from her heart; it was deliberately
planned to make him feel her anger. What had withheld her, under such