. You are looking at my
curtains," he added, turning to Penelope. "Let me show you the figures
upon them, and I will tell you the allegory."

He led her to the window, and explained to her for some moments the
story of the faded images which represented one chapter out of the
mythology of his country. And then she stopped him.

"Always," she said, "you and I seem to be talking of things that are
dead and past, or of a future which is out of our reach. Isn't it
possible to speak now and then of the present?"

"Of the actual present?" he asked softly. "Of this very moment?"

"Of this very moment, if you will," she answered. "Your fairy tale the
other night was wonderful, but it was a long way off."

The Prince was summoned away somewhat abruptly to bid farewell to a
little stream of departing guests. Today, more than ever, he seemed to
belong, indeed to the world of real and actual things, for a cousin
of his mother's, a Lady Stretton-Wynne, was helping him receive
his guests--his own aunt, as Penelope told herself more than once,
struggling all the time with a vague incredulity. When he was able to
rejoin her, she was examining a curious little coffer which stood upon
an ivory table.

"Show me the mystery of this lock," she begged. "I have been trying to
open it ever since you went away. One could imagine that the secrets of
a nation might be hidden here."

He smiled, and taking the box from her hands, touched a little spring.
Almost at once the lid flew open.

"I am afraid," he said, "that it is empty."

She peered in.

"No," she exclaimed, "there is something there! See!" She thrust in her
hand and drew out a small, curiously shaped dagger of fine blue steel
and a roll of silken cord. She held them up to him.

"What are these?" she asked. "Are they symbols--the cord and the knife
of destiny?"

He took them gently from her hand and replaced them in the box. She
heard the lock go with a little click, and looked into his face,
surprised at his silence.

"Is there anything the matter?" she asked. "Ought I not to have taken
them up?"

Almost as the words left her lips, she understood. His face was
inscrutable, but his very silence was ominous. She remembered a drawing
in one of the halfpenny papers, the drawing of a dagger found in a
horrible place. She remembered the description of that thin silken cord,
and she began to tremble.

"I did not know that anything was in the box," he said calmly. "I am
sor