re true--for,
remember, she saw me at a distance and against a background of rocks and
autumn flowers--but because they were her words, which I think you ought
to hear, with those that followed them."

"Irene has said many false things in her life," I said, smiling, "but by
all the Saints these were not among them."

Then we embraced again, and after that was finished Heliodore, her head
resting on my shoulder, continued her story:

"'What was she like, Mistress?' asked the lady Martina, for by this
time I had passed behind some little trees. 'I have seen no one who is
beautiful in this garden except yourself.'

"'She was clad in a clinging white robe, Martina, that left her arms
and bosom bare'--being alone, Olaf, I wore my Egyptian dress beneath my
cloak, which I had laid down because of the heat of the sun. 'She was
not so very tall, yet rounded and most graceful. Her eyes seemed large
and dark, Martina, like her hair; her face was tinted like a rich-hued
rose. Oh! were I a man she seemed such a one as I should love, who, like
all my people, have ever worshipped beauty. Yet, what did I say, that
she put me in mind of a nymph of Greece. Nay, that was not so. It was of
a goddess of Old Egypt that she put me in mind, for on her face was the
dreaming smile which I have seen on that of a statue of mother Isis whom
the Egyptians worshipped. Moreover, she wore just such a headdress as I
have noted upon those statues.'

"Now the lady Martina answered: 'Surely, you must have dreamed,
Mistress. The only Egyptian woman in the palace is the daughter of the
old Coptic noble, Magas, who is in Olaf's charge, and though I am told
that she is not so ugly as I heard at first, Olaf has never said to me
that she was like a goddess. What you saw was doubtless some image of
Fortune conjured up by your mind. This I take to be the best of omens,
who in these doubtful days grow superstitious.'

"'Would Olaf tell one woman that another was like a goddess, Martina,
even though she to whom he spoke was his god-mother and a dozen years
younger than himself? Come,' she added, 'and let us see if we can find
this Egyptian.'

"Then," Heliodore went on, "not knowing what to do, I stood still there
against the rockwork and the flowers till presently, round the bushes,
appeared the splendid lady and Martina."

Now when I, Olaf, heard all this, I groaned and said:

"Oh! Heliodore, it was the Augusta herself."

"Yes, it was the Augusta, as I