the Nile. All the people call her the Bride of the Nile."

At this that hideous, malignant smile again curled her lips, but she
hastily suppressed it and walked straight on into the house. At the door
he timidly asked her whether he might once more look on his mistress; but
she was obliged to forbid it for fear of infection. However, he proudly
replied: "What you do not fear, has no terrors for me," and he followed
her to the side of the bed where the corpse now lay washed and in fine
array; and when he saw Katharina kiss the dead woman's hand he, too, as
soon as she looked away, pressed his lips on the place hers had touched.
Then he sat down by the bed and remained there till she sent him away.

Before noon the bishop arrived to perform the last rites. He found the
body surrounded by beautiful flowers. Katharina had been out in the
garden again and had cut all the rarest and finest; and though she had
allowed the gardener to carry the basket for her, she would not have him
help her in gathering them. The feeling that she was doing something for
her mother had been a comfort to her; still, by day everything about her
seemed even more intolerable than by night. Everything looked so large,
so coarse, so insistent, so menacing, and reminded her at every step of
some injustice or some deed of which she was ashamed. Every eye, she
fancied, must see through her; and now and then it seemed as though the
pillars of the great banqueting-hall, where her mother still lay, were
tottering, and the ceiling about to fall in and crush her.

She answered the bishop's questions absently and often quite at random,
and the old man supposed that she was stunned by her great sorrow; so to
give her thoughts a new direction he began telling her about Paula, and
believing that Katharina was fond of her, he confided to her that he had
taken Paula, the day before, to Orion's cell, and consecrated their