hy
was she so moved about this matter of the necklace of golden shells?"

"Heliodore," I answered, "I must tell now what I have hidden from you.
The Augusta has been pleased--why, I cannot say, but chiefly, I suppose,
because of late years it has been my fancy to keep myself apart from
women, which is rare in this land--to show me certain favour. I gather,
even, that, whether she means it or means it not, she has thought of me
as a husband."

"Oh!" interrupted Heliodore, starting away from me, "now I understand
everything. And, pray, have you thought as a wife of her, who has been a
widow these ten years and has a son of twenty?"

"God above us alone knows what I have or have not thought, but it is
certain that at present I think of her only as one who has been most
kind to me, but who is more to be feared than my worst foe, if I have
any."

"Hush!" she said, raising her finger. "I fancied I heard someone stir
behind us."

"Fear nothing," I answered. "We are alone here, for I set guards of my
own company around the place, with command to admit no one, and my order
runs against all save the Empress in person."

"Then we are safe, Olaf, since this damp would disarrange her hair,
which, I noted, is curled with irons, not by Nature, like my own. Oh!
Olaf, Olaf, how wonderful is the fate that has brought us together. I
say that when I saw you yonder in the cathedral for the first time since
I was born, I knew you again, as you knew me. That is why, when you
whispered to me, 'Greeting after the ages,' I gave you back your
welcome. I know nothing of the past. If we lived and loved before, that
tale is lost to me. But there's your dream and there's the necklace.
When I was a child, Olaf, it was taken from the embalmed body of some
royal woman, who, by tradition, was of my own race, yes, and by records
of which my father can tell you, for he is among the last who can still
read the writing of the old Egyptians. Moreover, she was very like me,
Olaf, for I remember her well as she lay in her coffin, preserved by
arts which the Egyptians had. She was young, not much older than I am
to-day, and her story tells that she died in giving birth to a son, who
grew up a strong and vigorous man, and although he was but half royal,
founded a new dynasty in Egypt and became my forefather. This necklace
lay upon her breast, and beneath it a writing on papyrus, which said
that when the half of it which was lost should be joined again to