"Have you asked the prince?"

"No, not yet; there's the question, to begin with, whether he'll see
_me_. But then ... how am I to take you to him? There are always
servants hanging about in the doorways, to say nothing of the guards and
halberdiers; in the anterooms you run up against a chamberlain at any
moment. Really, it is impossible."

She grew angry:

"Begin by asking him. We'll see later how we're to get to him."

Dutri made graceful gestures of despair:

"But, Alexa, can't you really understand ... that it is impossible?..."

She made no reply, not wishing to reflect, her head filled with her
stubborn fixed idea to see the prince, to insist on seeing him. And,
suddenly, turning to him:

"Very well, if you don't care to do anything for me, you needn't think I
shall help you in _any_ way."

Her nervous, angry voice sounded louder than her first whispered words:
the two girls heard her.

"Alexa," he besought her, gently.

"No, no," she resisted, curtly.

He thought of his debts and of Eleonore:

"I'll try," he whispered, in despair.

She promptly rewarded him with a smile; he went, hurried away again,
with his eternal air of fussy importance, because of his young imperial
master, who was so sadly ill. In the anteroom he found the chamberlain
on duty:

"Would the prince be willing to see me?"

The chamberlain shrugged his shoulders:

"I'll ask," he said.

He speedily returned: the prince had sent word that Dutri could come in.

Dutri entered. Othomar lay on a couch covered with tiger-skins, in front
of his writing-table. He had grown thinner; his eyes were hollow, his
complexion was wan; his neck protruded frail and wasted from the loose
turn-down collar of his silk shirt, over which he wore a velvet jacket.
In his hand he held an open book. Djalo, the collie, lay on the floor.

Dutri the voluble began to press his request in rapid sentences
following close upon one another's heels....

"The duchess?" repeated Othomar, faintly. "No, no...."

Dutri galloped on, simulated melancholy, employed words of gentle,
insinuating sadness. Othomar's face assumed an expression which was
strange to it and quite new: it was as though the melancholy of his
features were crystallizing into a stubborn obstinacy, a silent
doggedness.

"No," he said once more, while his voice, too, sounded dogged and
obstinate. "Make my apologies to the duchess, Dutri. And where ... where
would she wish to see me?"

"I