The Professor stopped speaking.  The fountain again made itself heard in the midst of the shadow.  My pulses beat, my head seemed on fire.  A fever was consuming me.

“And all of them,” I cried, regardless of the place, “all of them complied!  They submitted!  Well, she has only to come and she will see what will happen.”

Morhange was silent.

“My dear sir,” said M. Le Mesge in a very gentle voice, “you are speaking like a child.  You do not know.  You have not seen Antinea.  Let me tell you one thing:  that among those”—­and with a sweeping gesture he indicated the silent circle of statues—­“there were men as courageous as you and perhaps less excitable.  I remember one of them especially well, a phlegmatic Englishman who now is resting under Number 32.  When he first appeared before Antinea, he was smoking a cigar.  And, like all the rest, he bent before the gaze of his sovereign.

“Do not speak until you have seen her.  A university training hardly fits one to discourse upon matters of passion, and I feel scarcely qualified, myself, to tell you what Antinea is.  I only affirm this, that when you have seen her, you will remember nothing else.  Family, country, honor, you will renounce everything for her.”

“Everything?” asked Morhange in a calm voice.

“Everything,” Le Mesge insisted emphatically.  “You will forget all, you will renounce all.”

From outside, a faint sound came to us.

Le Mesge consulted his watch.

“In any case, you will see.”

The door opened.  A tall white Targa, the tallest we had yet seen in this remarkable abode, entered and came toward us.

He bowed and touched me lightly on the shoulder.

“Follow him,” said M. Le Mesge.

Without a word, I obeyed.

XI

ANTINEA

My guide and I passed along another long corridor.  My excitement increased.  I was impatient for one thing only, to come face to face with that woman, to tell her....  So far as anything else was concerned, I already was done for.

I was mistaken in hoping that the adventure would take an heroic turn at once.  In real life, these contrasts never are definitely marked out.  I should have remembered from many past incidents that the burlesque was regularly mixed with the tragic in my life.

We reached a little transparent door.  My guide stood aside to let me pass.

I found myself in the most luxurious of dressing-rooms.  A ground glass ceiling diffused a gay rosy light over the marble floor.  The first thing I noticed was a clock, fastened to the wall.  In place of the figures for the hours, were the signs of the Zodiac.  The small hand had not yet reached the sign of Capricorn.

Only three o’clock!

The day seemed to have lasted a century already....  And only a little more than half of it was gone.