flicker, and played with Paula's brown hair as she sat absorbed, as it
seemed, in the game. Orion, who stood behind her, had several times
endeavored to attract her attention, but in vain. He now eagerly offered
his services to fetch her a handkerchief to preserve her from a chill;
this, however, she shortly and decidedly declined, though the breeze came
up damp from the river and she had more than once drawn her peplos more
closely across her bosom.

The young man set his teeth at this fresh repulse. He did not know that
his mother had told Paula what he had yesterday agreed to, and could not
account for the girl's altered behavior. All day she had treated him
with icy coldness, had scarcely answered his questions with a distant
"Yes," or "No;" and to him, the spoilt favorite of women, this conduct
had become more and more intolerable. Yes, his mother had judged her
rightly: she allowed herself to be swayed in a most extraordinary
manner by her moods; and now even he was to feel the insolence of her
haughtiness, of which he had as yet seen nothing. This repellent
coldness bordered on rudeness and he had no mind to submit to it for
long. It was with deep vexation that he watched every turn of her hand,
every movement of her body, and the varying expression of her face; and
the more the image of this proud maiden sank into his heart the more
lovely and perfect he thought her, and the greater grew his desire to see
her smile once more, to see her again as sweetly womanly as she had been
but yesterday. Now she was like nothing so much as a splendid marble
statue, though he knew indeed that it had a soul--and what a glorious
task it would be to free this fair being from herself, as it were, from
the foolish tempers that enslaved her, to show her--by severity if need
should be--what best beseems a woman, a maiden.

He became more and more exclusively absorbed in watching the young girl,