the play representing the defeat of the Austrian army by the
Italians,--while she herself, after having her samovar and other
tea-things brought to her room, took up her mandolin and struck a few
chords on its strings. The reclining Sappho answered her, and a few
minutes later there came a knock on the back of the fireplace.

"Come in!"

The phoenix rose, and the fair Cyrene appeared, this time in full
toilet, as for a fashionable call, her hair dressed in the English mode,
a lace shawl falling over her pink silk gown, from beneath which one got
an occasional glimpse of the richly embroidered underskirt and a pair
of little feet encased in high-heeled shoes.

"You were going out?" asked the princess.

"I was coming to see you."

"Did you know I was waiting for you?"

"I told you yesterday I should come, and I knew you were expecting me
from your sending your servants away to the theatre."

"And you knew that too?"

"Yes, because they took mine along with them. So here we are all alone
by ourselves."

The consciousness of being the only living creatures in a whole house
has a delicious charm, fraught with mystery and awe, for two young
women. Blanka took her guest's hat and shawl, and then proceeded to
start a fire on the hearth. The fair Cyrene meanwhile caught up her
mandolin and began to sing one of Alfred de Musset's songs, full of the
warmth and glow of the sunny South. Presently the hostess invited her
guest to take tea with her, and asked her at the same time her baptismal
name.

The marchioness laughed. "Haven't you heard it often enough? They call
me 'Cyrene.'"

"But that isn't your real name," objected Blanka. "You were not
christened 'Cyrene.'"

"I use it for my name, however, and no one but my father confessor calls
me by my real name, so that now I never hear it without thinking that I
must fall on my knees and repeat a dozen paternosters in penance.
Besides, my name doesn't suit me at all. It is Rozina, and I am as pale
as moonshine. You might far better be called Rozina, for you have such
beautiful rosy cheeks, and I should have been named Blanka. I'll tell
you, suppose we exchange names: you call me Blanka, and I'll call you
Rozina."

The suggestion seemed so funny to Blanka that she burst out laughing,
and a woman who laughs is already more than half won over.

"Now, then," continued the other, "we can chat away to our heart's
content. There's no one to listen to us or play the spy--a