ome of the chief of his
famous treasures. It was notable for its lack of drapery and
upholstering--only a sofa or two and a few fine rugs on the cedar
floor. The walls were of a green marble veined like malachite, the
ceiling was of darker marble inlaid with white intaglios. Scattered
everywhere were tables and cabinets laden with celadon china, and
carved jade, and ivories, and shimmering Persian and Rhodian vessels.
In all the room there was scarcely anything of metal and no touch of
gilding or bright colour. The light came from green alabaster censers,
and the place swam in a cold green radiance like some cavern below the
sea. The air was warm and scented, and though it was very quiet there,
a hum of voices and the strains of dance music drifted to it from the
pillared corridor in which could be seen the glare of lights from the
great ballroom beyond.

The young man had a thin face with lines of suffering round the mouth
and eyes. The warm room had given him a high colour, which increased
his air of fragility. He felt a little choked by the place, which
seemed to him for both body and mind a hot-house, though he knew very
well that the Nirski Palace on this gala evening was in no way typical
of the land or its masters. Only a week ago he had been eating black
bread with its owner in a hut on the Volhynian front.

"You have become amazing, Saskia," he said. "I won't pay my old
playfellow compliments; besides, you must be tired of them. I wish you
happiness all the day long like a fairy-tale Princess. But a crock
like me can't do much to help you to it. The service seems to be the
wrong way round, for here you are wasting your time talking to me."

She put her hand on his. "Poor Quentin! Is the leg very bad?"

He laughed. "O, no. It's mending famously. I'll be able to get about
without a stick in another month, and then you've got to teach me all
the new dances."

The jigging music of a two-step floated down the corridor. It made the
young man's brow contract, for it brought to him a vision of dead faces
in the gloom of a November dusk. He had once had a friend who used to
whistle that air, and he had seen him die in the Hollebeke mud. There
was something macabre in the tune.... He was surely morbid this
evening, for there seemed something macabre about the house, the room,
the dancing, all Russia.... These last days he had suffered from a
sense of calamity impending, of a dark curtain drawing