the increasing intelligence of humanity, the coming of the Christ, these things are surely of some weight with you, are they not?  Or are you made of the same savage and impenitent stuff as composed the once famous yet brutal warrior of old time?  Do you admire the character and spirit of Araxes?—­he who, if history reports him truly, would snatch a woman’s life as though it were a wayside flower, crush out all its sweetness and delicacy, and then fling it into the dust withered and dead?  Do you think that because a man is strong and famous, he has a right to the love of woman?—­a charter to destroy her as he pleases?  If you remember the story I told you, Araxes murdered with his own hand Ziska-Charmazel the woman who loved him.”

“He had perhaps grown weary of her,” said Gervase, speaking with an effort, and still studying the exquisite loveliness of the bewitching face that was so close to his own, like a man in a dream.

At this she laughed, and laid her two hands on his shoulders with a close and clinging clasp which thrilled him strangely.

“Ah, there is the difficulty!” she said.

“What cure shall ever be found for love-weariness?  Men are all like children—­they tire of their toys; hence the frequent trouble and discomfort of marriage.  They grow weary of the same face, the same caressing arms, the same faithful heart!  You, for instance, would grow weary of me!”

“I think not,” answered Gervase.  And now the vague sense of uncertainty and pain which had distressed him passed away, leaving him fully self-possessed once more.  “I think you are one of those exceptional women whom a man never grows weary of:  like a Cleopatra, or any other old-world enchantress, you fascinate with a look, you fasten with a touch, and you have a singular freshness and wild attraction about you which makes you unlike any other of your sex.  I know well enough that I shall never get the memory of you out of my brain; your face will haunt me till I die!”

“And after death?” she queried, half-closing her eyes, and regarding him languorously through her silky black lashes.

“Ah, ma belle, after that there is nothing to be done even in the way of love.  Tout est fini!  Considering the brevity of life and the absolute certainty of death, I think that the men and women who are so foolish as to miss any opportunities of enjoyment while they are alive deserve more punishment than those who take all they can get, even in the line of what is called wickedness.  Wickedness is a curious thing:  it takes different shapes in different lands, and what is called ‘wicked’ here, is virtue in, let us say, the Fiji Islands.  There is really no strict rule of conduct in the world, no fixed law of morality.”

“There is honor!” said the Princess, slowly;—­“A code which even savages recognize.”

He was silent.  For a moment he seemed to hesitate; but his indecision soon passed.  His face flushed, and anon grew pale, as closing his arms more victoriously round the fair woman who just then appeared voluntarily to yield to his embrace, he bent down and whispered a few words in the tiny ear, white and delicate as a shell, which was half-hidden by the rich loose clusters of her luxuriant hair.  She heard, and smiled; and her eyes flashed with a singular ferocity which he did not see, otherwise it might have startled him.