lcano!"

He shook his foppish, curly head disapprovingly, adjusted the heavy
tassels of his uniform. She took his hand, still serious, not yet
relapsing into her tone of persiflage:

"Dutri, when you hear from him, will you promise to tell me about him? I
sometimes hunger for news of him...."

She looked at him with such intense, violent longing, with such hunger,
that he was startled. He saw in her the woman prepared to do all things
for her passion. Then he smiled, flippant as always:

"What silly creatures you all are! Very well, I promise. But let us go
in now, for the geographical studies seem to be finished and I am dying
for a cup of tea...."

They went indoors. Busying herself at the tea-table, letting her fingers
move gracefully over the antique Chinese cups, she straightway asked the
crown-prince which road his highness proposed to take, feeling great
concern about the inundated villages, the poor peasants, agreeing
entirely in all things with the Duke of Xara, bathing in the sympathy
which she gathered from his sweet, black, melancholy eyes--eyes from
which she felt tempted to kiss all the melancholy away--bathing in his
youthful splendour of empire....

Dutri helped her to sugar the tea. He watched her with interest: he knew
her fairly well, she retained very little enigma for him; yet she always
amused him and he always found in her a fresh subject for study.

4

It was one of the historic apartments of Castel Vaza, an ancient, sombre
room in which the emperors of Liparia who had been guests of the dukes
of Yemena had always slept on an old, gilt bed of state, raised five
steps from the floor, a bed around which the heavy curtains of dark-blue
brocade and velvet hung from an imperial crown borne by cherubs. On the
walls were portraits of all the emperors and empresses who had rested
there: the dukes of Yemena had always been much loved by their
sovereigns and the pride of the ducal family was that every Liparian
emperor had been at least one night its guest. Historical memories were
attached to every piece of furniture, to every ornament, to the gilt
basin and the gilt ewer, to everything; and the legends of his house
rose one by one in Othomar's mind as he stretched himself out to rest.

He was very weary and yet not sleepy. He felt a leaden stiffness in his
joints, as though he had caught cold, and a continuous shiver passed
through his whole body, a mysterious quivering of the nerves, as if