both her hands, he looked straight into her face.

"Brrr!" he exclaimed, "your daredevil son was never so much frightened
in his life as by your threats. What dreadful words are these--and even
worse were at the tip of your tongue! Mother--Mother Neforis! Your name
means kindness, but you can be cruel, bitterly cruel!"

Still he drew her fondly to him, and kissed her hair and brow and cheeks
with eager haste, in a vehemence of feeling which came over him like a
revulsion after the shock he had gone through; and when they parted he
had given her leave to negotiate for little Katharina's hand on his
behalf, and she had promised in return that it should be not on the
morrow but the day after at soonest. This delay seemed to him a sort of
victory and when he found himself alone and reflected on what he had done
in yielding to his mother, though his heart bled from the wounds of which
he himself knew not the depth, he rejoiced that he had not bound Paula by
any closer tie. His eyes had indeed told her much, but the word "Love"
had not passed his lips--and yet that was what it came to.--But surely
a cousin might be allowed to kiss the hand of a lovely relation. She was
a desirable woman--ah, how desirable!--and must ever be: but to quarrel
with his parents for the sake of a girl, were she Aphrodite herself,
or one of the Muses or the Graces--that was impossible! There were
thousands of pretty women in the world, but only one mother; and how
often had his heart beat high and won another heart, taken all it had
to give, and then easily and quickly recovered its balance.

This time however, it seemed more deeply hit than on former occasions;
even the lovely Persian slave for whose sake he had committed the wildest
follies while yet scarcely more than a school-boy--even the bewitching
Heliodora at Constantinople for whom he still had a tender thought, had