s Neronic head close to her face. His great antipathy for this
man is mingled with jealousy. And, while he smiles and listens to the
Duke of Yemena, he feels that he now knows for certain that his love
after all _is_ love, because jealousy plays a part in it.

3

Next morning, when Othomar rode out alone, he was thinking the whole
time of Dutri. The difficulty of broaching the subject to his equerry
struck him as unsurmountable. His heart beat when he met Dutri waiting
for him in the Xaverius Barracks. But the young officer had the tact to
whisper to him, very calmly and courteously, as though it were the
simplest matter in the world:

"I was talking with the Duchess of Yemena, highness.... Her excellency
told me that your highness wished to speak to her in private and did me
the honour.... Will your highness take this key?..."

Othomar mechanically accepted the key. His face remained rigid and
serious, but inwardly he felt much annoyed with the duchess and did not
understand how and why she could drag Dutri into their secret. The ease
and simplicity with which she had evidently done so flashed across him
as something alarming. A confusion seemed to whirl through his head, as
though the duchess and Dutri had, with one breath, blasted all sorts of
firm convictions of his youth. He thought of the old duke. He considered
all this wrong. He knew that Dutri was a young profligate; he was in the
habit of hearing the whole gazette of court scandal from him, but he had
never believed one-half of what Dutri related and had often told the
equerry bluntly that he did not like to hear ill spoken of people whom
they saw daily, people attached to his house. Now it seemed to him that
everything that Dutri had said might be true and that yet worse things
might well take place. This key, offered with such simple politeness,
with such libertine ease, appeared to him as an object of searing
dishonour. He was already ashamed of having put the thing in his
pocket....

He went on, however. The key burnt him while he spoke with General
Ducardi and, on his return to the Imperial, with his father and Myxila.
Before going to visit the empress, who was awaiting him, he locked it
away in his writing-table; then slowly, his forehead overshadowed, step
by step he went through the long galleries to the empress' apartments.
In the anteroom the lady-in-waiting rose, curtseyed, knocked at the door
and opened it:

"His highness the Duke of Xar