e younger of his companions but entering before the other.
In the great hall whose walls were adorned with horns and heads and
tusks, and whose floor was almost completely carpeted with skins, they
gave their weapons to a couple of footmen; and as they did so he saw the
slim and yet stately figure of a woman coming down the winding stair
which led into the hall from a broad gallery running round it. As she
reached the bottom of the stairway she threw her head back a little, and
held out both her hands towards the man who had come in second. As the
light of a great swinging lamp above the stairway fell upon her upturned
face, he recognised the Countess Hermia von Zastrow, the reigning
European beauty whose portrait in the illustrated papers, and in the
great photographer's windows, was almost as familiar as that of Queen
Alexandra.

The Count--for the handsome young hunter who now took her hands could
now be no other than the Prince of Boravia-Trelitz--raised her right
hand in courtly fashion to his lips. The other two bowed low before her,
and then she led the way up the stairs.

He saw all this as distinctly as though he had been actually present,
and yet none of the party seemed to take the slightest notice of him.
But he was getting quite accustomed to miracle-working now, and so he
accepted the extraordinary conditions of his visions, or whatever it
was, with more interest than astonishment. He followed them up the
stairs and along the right hand side of the gallery. The Count opened a
door of heavy black oak and stood aside for his Countess to enter. Again
the younger of his companions went first, and again he followed; then,
as the elder man entered and closed the door, the scene was blotted out
as though a sudden darkness had fallen upon his eyes.

"Dear me!" he said, getting up and rubbing his temples with both hands.
"If I hadn't had so many extraordinary experiences since my promotion to
the plane of N4, I should probably be a little scared as well. But it
is really astonishing how soon the trained intellect gets accustomed to
anything--even the eccentricities of the fourth dimensional world.
Well, well! I hope that's not the end of the adventure, I was getting
quite interested. I suppose this must be in some obscure way the reason
why those paragraphs in the _Pall Mall_ interested me so strangely."

He walked towards the window, pulled the blind aside and looked out. But
instead of his own tree-shaded lawn