. He forgot that he had sold her into
bondage; forgot that her happiness might not lie along the road of his.
She had done what he would have her do; she had been a dutiful daughter,
and at the last he rejoiced in her.

Varia, at that hour, sat alone in her chamber, awaiting the coming of
her lord. There were traces of tears upon her cheeks; her lids drooped
with weariness and sleep. They had taken away her robes of state, in
which she had sat by Marius's side through interminable hours of
merrymaking, when a thousand eyes had stared at her from a swimming sea
of lights, and she had shrunk and trembled beneath their glances. They
had put upon her a thin robe of Seres silk of rose, with no ornament or
jewel upon it. With bare neck and arms, and warm white throat bending
with the drooping flower of her head, she looked more than ever a child.
To all that they had done to her throughout the endless days of
festival, she had submitted docilely, dazed, if she could have told it,
by the excitement of those around her. Faces, scenes, events, had passed
before her in a blurred confusion, in which she could neither think nor
see clearly. She had repeated words of whose meaning she had no
knowledge; she had drunk wine and only been distressed that a drop had
fallen upon her royal robe; she had broken a cake of bread and only
wondered why her little black slave was not there to gather up the
crumbs. Of her lord she had seen little, save upon one fearful night of
which the memory still sent burning shudders through her frightened
heart. She drifted upon a gray sea of loneliness, torn from her old
shelters, given nothing to which she might turn and cling.

She got up from the chair covered with rugs of white fur, in which she
had been nestling like a great rose, and went to the window which looked
upon the garden, all her movements restless, like some shy creature
caged. Now the garden lay deserted, desolate in the mistiness of the
moonlight. She held her arms out to it in vague yearning.

"I would I were out there now!" she cried softly. "Where the trees
whisper and the lake sleeps, and none but may hear the music of one
voice. He is gone--he is gone from me, and I know not where they have
taken him. And I long for him; I would I could creep into his arms and
rest upon his breast forever, for then I should not be frightened. Now I
am left alone--I know not where to turn for very fear--my head it
burneth and my hands are cold. And