y caged. But the wild heart of the eagle beat in
this nightingale's breast, and the eyes burned as fiercely toward the east
as the east burned toward the west. Sunday and Monday, Tuesday and
Wednesday and Thursday, to-day; and that the five dawns were singular in
beauty and that she had never in her life before witnessed the creation of
five days, one after another, made no impression upon her sense of the
beautiful, so delicate and receptive in ordinary times. She was conscious
that within her the cup of wrath was overflowing. Of other things, such as
eating and sleeping and moving about in her cage (more like an eagle
indeed than a nightingale), recurrence had blunted her perception.

Her clothes were soiled and crumpled, sundrily torn; her hair was in
disorder, and tendrils hung about her temples and forehead--thick black
hair, full of purple tones in the sunlight--for she had not surrendered
peacefully to this incarceration. Dignity, that phase of philosophy which
accepts quietly the inevitable, she had thrown to the winds. She had
fought desperately, primordially, when she had learned that her errand of
mercy was nothing more than a cruel hoax.

"Oh, but he shall pay, he shall pay!" she murmured, striving to loosen the
bars with her small, white, helpless hands. The cry seemed to be an
arietta, for through all these four maddening days she had voiced it,--now
low and deadly with hate, now full-toned in burning anger, now broken by
sobs of despair. "Will you never come, so that I may tell you how base and
vile you are?" she further addressed the east.

She had waited for his appearance on Sunday. Late in the day one of the
jailers had informed her that it was impossible for the gentleman to come
before Monday. So she marshaled her army of phrases, of accusations, of
denunciations, ready to smother him with them the moment he came. But he
came not Monday, nor Tuesday, nor Wednesday. The suspense was to her mind
diabolical. She began to understand: he intended to keep her there till he
was sure that her spirit was broken, then he would come. Break her spirit?
She laughed wildly. He could break her spirit no more easily than she
could break these bars. To bring her to Versailles upon an errand of
mercy! Well, he was capable of anything.

The room was large and fairly comfortable, but contained nothing
breakable, having been tenanted at one time by a strenuous lunatic, who
had considerately died after his immediate fa