“Thank you very much.  But let me ask you, if I may, where you heard that odious nickname?  I hate it.”

“From the same person who told you the secret that my Pulcheria is called Pul!” said Rufinus; he laughed and bowed and left the two girls together.

“What a dear old man!” cried Katharina.  “Oh, I know quite well how he spends his Days!  And his pretty wife and Pul—­I know them all.  How often I have watched them—­I will show you the place one day!  I can see over the whole garden, only not what goes on near the convent on the other side of the house, or beyond those trees.  You know my mother; if she once dislikes any one. . . .  But Pul, you understand, would be such a friend for me!”

“Of course she would,” replied Paula.  “And a girl of your age must chose older companions than little Mary.”

“Oh, you shall not say a word against her!” cried Katharina eagerly.  “She is only ten years old, but many a grown-up person is not so upright or so capable as I have found her during these last few miserable days.”

“Poor child!” said Paula stroking her hair.

At this a bitter sob broke suddenly and passionately from Katharina; she tried with all her might to suppress it, but could not succeed.  Her fit of weeping was so violent that she could not utter a word, till Paula had led her to a bench under a spreading sycamore, had induced her with gentle force to sit down by her side, clasping her in her arms like a suffering child, and speaking to her words of comfort and encouragement.

Birds without number were going to rest in the dense branches overhead, owls and bats had begun their nocturnal raids, the sky put on its spangled glory of gold and silver stars, from the western end of the town came the jackals’ bark as they left their lurking-places among the ruined houses and stole out in search of prey, the heavy dew, falling through the mild air silently covered the leaves, the grass, and the flowers; the garden was more powerfully fragrant now than during the day-time, and Paula felt that it was high time to take refuge from the mists that came up from the shallow stream.  But still she lingered while the little maiden poured out all that weighed upon her, all she repented of, believing she could never atone for it; and then all she had gone through, thinking it must break her heart, and all she still had to live down and drive out of her mind.

She told Paula how Orion had wooed her, how much she loved him, how her heart had been tortured by jealousy of her, Paula, and how she had allowed herself to be led away into bearing false witness before the judges.  And then she went on to say it was Mary who had first opened her eyes to the abyss by which she was standing.  In the afternoon after the death of the Mukaukas she had gone with her mother to the governor’s house to join in her friends’ lamentations.  She had at once asked after Mary, but had not been allowed to see her, for she was still