bassadors waiting there in the hope of a word with the Ruler of
the Earth! Look at my legions mustered on the drilling-grounds, and
understand how great the Grecian girl has grown by virtue of the face
which is less beauteous than that of--Iduna the Fair!"

"I understand all this, Augusta," I answered. "Yet it would seem that
you are not happy. Did you not tell me just now that you could not find
a friend and that you had begotten a fool?"

"Happy, Olaf? Why, I am wretched, so wretched that often I think the
hell of which the priests preach is here on earth, and that I dwell in
its hottest fires. Unless love hides it, what happiness is there in this
life of ours, which must end in blackest death?"

"Love has its miseries also, Augusta. That I know, for once I loved."

"Aye, but then the love was not true, for this is the greatest curse of
all--to love and not to be beloved. For the sake of a perfect love, if
it could be won--why, I'd sacrifice even my ambition."

"Then you must keep your ambition, Augusta, since in this world you'll
find nothing perfect."

"Olaf, I'm not so sure. Thoughts have come to me. Olaf, I told you that
I have no friend in all this glittering Court. Will you be my friend?"

"I am your honest servant, Augusta, and I think that such a one is the
best of friends."

"That's so; and yet no man can be true friend to a woman unless he
is--more than friend. Nature has writ it so."

"I do not understand," I answered.

"You mean that you will not understand, and perhaps you are wise. Why
do you stare at that pavement? There's a story written on it. The old
goddess of my people, Aphrodite, loved a certain Adonis--so runs the
fable--but he loved not her, and thought only of his sports. Look, she
woos him there, and he rejects her, and in her rage she stabs him."

"Not so," I answered. "Of the end of the story I know nothing, but, if
she had meant to kill him, the dagger would be in her right hand, not in
her left."

"That's true, Olaf; and in the end it was Fate which killed him, not
the goddess whom he had scorned. And yet, Olaf, it is not wise to scorn
goddesses. Oh! of what do I talk? You'll befriend me, will you not?"

"Aye, Augusta, to the last drop of my blood, as is my duty. Do I not
take your pay?"

"Then thus I seal our friendship and here's an earnest of the pay,"
Irene said slowly, and, bending forward, she kissed me on the lips.

At this moment the doors of the chamber were throw