shorten her miserable existence?

So she took the familiar remedy, at first hesitatingly and then more
freely; and on the second day again, with real pleasure and happy
expectancy, for it had not merely procured her a good night but had
brought her joy in the morning: The dead had appeared to her, and for
the first time not in the act of cursing, but as a young and happy man.

No one in the house knew what comfort the widow had had recourse to; the
physician and her son had been glad yesterday to find her more composed.

When Orion returned home, after concluding his business with the money-
changer at Fostat, he had to make his way through a crowd of people, and
found the court-yard full of men, and the guards and servants in the
greatest excitement. No less a personage than the Patriarch had arrived
on a visit, and was now in conference with Neforis. Sebek, the steward,
informed Orion that he had asked for him, and that his mother wished that
he should immediately join them and pay his respects to the very reverend
Father.

"She wished it?" asked the young man, as he tossed his riding-hat to a
slave, and he stood hesitating.

He was too much a son of his time, and the Church and her ministers had
exercised too marked influence on his education, for the great prelate's
visit to be regarded otherwise than as a high honor. At the same time he
could not forget the insult done to his father's vanes, nor the Arab
general's warning to be on his guard against Benjamin's enmity; and
perhaps, he said to himself, it might be better to avoid a meeting with
the powerful priest than to expose himself to the danger of losing his