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Leopold rode slowly along the banks of the Danube towards Vienna. He did not pause till he had reached the grandiose edifice of Mölk, forty miles from the capital. He had not brought with him his modest baggage or his one body servant; save for a few crowns in his pocket he was unequipped for the journey; he lingered now, wretched, undecided, thinking of his destination with vexation and bitter distaste.

He halted at the rough inn which was one of the cluster of miserable houses at the foot of the bold jutting rock from which rose the sweeping walls and lordly cupolas of Mölk. Dismounting, he ordered food; to be served outside, for he could not endure the filthy interior of the inn. By the rude table under the rusty, withered vine he watched the flies buzzing in and out of the soiled beer mugs, while by his feet the starving fowls scratched in the dust; a melancholy, a sordid scene scarcely redeemed even by the grand beauty of the landscape.

He overheard two peasants drinking near him talk about the hermit who lived the other side of the gorge. This word "hermit" attracted him—he remembered what Hensdorff had said when he suggested he would "throw it all up and become a hermit."

Leopold wondered idly what a hermit really was. He would snatch at any delay if he could only put off the moment of his arrival in Vienna—the moment when the dull formality of the Hofburg would close over him again.

The figure of the Princess Eleanora continued to dance before his eyes like a spark of gold. He could not believe he had actually seen her standing on the balcony, saying "Don't go, don't go away." Or had she really said that or had it merely been a cry, an appeal in her blue eyes, not on her trembling lips? He could see her beneath the beech with her pottle of strawberries. It might have been a dream for all the unearthly ravishment of beauty it held, that picture; but he knew that she was left behind in Schönbuchel, wondering why he had ridden away, at this moment, probably wondering that ...

He asked the ragged landlord, who seemed to consider him the same quality as the other travellers, where this hermit lived? The fellow stupidly replied that it was the other side of the gorge, he believed.

"If you cross the ravine at the bridge you will see the hermit's cave."

Leopold left his horse in the wretched stable and went out in search of this bridge; a hermit seemed an odd, fantastic personage; he might be full of good advice; Leopold was always searching for good advice.

By mid afternoon, in the great blaze of the heat, he had discovered the bridge. He was tired; the scenery seemed to overpower him, the rocks were too high, too brightly coloured, the sky too blue, the sun too fierce in the thin air. He was glad of the shadow that lay on the ravine; he was glad of those darker shadows in the recesses of the jutting rocks and of that cool steady swirl of water beneath the slender bridge and of the paler shade of the trees beyond bridge and rocks.

Soon he found the hermit; the man lived in a cave that had been partially hollowed out by human hands. It was overhung with clusters of bright, clear, sharp-fronded ferns; in front of this rude habitation was a little plot of cultivated ground in which grew vegetables and a few apple trees.

Leopold paused, sat down on a smooth stone, and looked at this little remote garden, so different from any garden he had seen before. It was very beautiful, sheltered from the sun by the enormous boughs of the trees that grew high up the rock and with those beautiful knots and clusters of all manner of plumy, airy ferns, vivid and gorgeous; the dripping of the crystal waters which slid down from the upper rock cast a silver lustre over the dark surface of the stone.

Leopold was not wishful to disturb the hermit, he felt fatigued and strange sitting here in this out-of-the-way spot. It seemed impossible that this very morning he had flung out of Schönbuchel in such hot, dull fury.

Presently the hermit himself appeared leading a couple of white goats. There was nothing fantastic about his appearance; he was dressed like any peasant in a rude coat girdled round the waist; a battered hat protected his head from the sun, a ragged beard descended to his waist.

He greeted Leopold without surprise.

"Are you," asked the young man negligently, "the hermit?"

"Yea," replied the other, smiling, "that is what they call me round about here. You know the odd words people use?"

"Yes," said Leopold. "Words do not mean very much to me, but I am forced very often to regard them. You, then, are the hermit?"

"Yes, and who are you?"

Leopold replied as he had replied to the Duchess, "I am nothing," and with an echo of that deep bitterness.

"Nothing then speaks to nothing," replied the other man.

"Why," asked Leopold, curiously, "do you live here retired from the world?"

"And why," was the reply, "do you live in the world?"

"I do not know," said Leopold.

"Neither do I," smiled the other. "Will you come in and have a meal?"

Leopold answered that he had already partaken of wine and refreshment in the atrocious inn below.

"What made you come up here?" asked the recluse.

"Curiosity," admitted Leopold.

The hermit remarked that no other reason ever brought any one up to these lonely defiles; Leopold, leaning forward with his long face in his hand, and his elbow on his knee, demanded why this man had discarded the world, why he lived in this curious spot?

The hermit did not seem wishful to answer these questions; he tethered his goats to the stump of an old tree, seated himself on one of the smooth boulders ringed with ferns close to Leopold.

"The place," remarked the young man, "is extraordinarily beautiful."

"I do not know," smiled the hermit, "that beauty makes very much difference to anything. I cease to notice the beauty, and the peace; both have become commonplace to me."

"You might as well, then," pondered Leopold, "live in a city."

The hermit said that he might as well, save that in the city one must spend money, and he had never had money nor the capacity to earn any; here he was freed of that anxiety; at best, able to let life slip through his fingers as the fine sand slipped through the hour glass, without sound. Leopold was pleased by this simile, soothed by the way it was given; he wondered if this state of mind was more easily achieved in these solitudes than in those grand halls where he repined so fretfully.

"I," he said, wistfully, "have often wished to retire from the world; it seems impossible—I am hemmed in all directions."

"Every one says that," replied the hermit. "There is no one so mean or so poor or so insignificant that he does not believe himself chained down by some circumstance."

"Supposing," asked Leopold, smiling at this misreading of him, "that you were the Emperor?"

The hermit replied mildly that he could not suppose any such thing. "I have forgotten," he admitted, "that there is such a person as the Emperor, and I pity him."

"So," said Leopold, "do I." and then he asked suddenly: "What do you think of hatred? Is not it a terrible thing—hatred? It is worse to hate than it is to be hated."

"Of course," agreed the hermit. "You may avoid the hatred given out by some one else but you cannot avoid the hatred that you give out."

"What do you mean by avoid?" asked Leopold. "What is it that I should avoid?"

"Hatred," answered the old man placidly.

"Hatred, then," mused Leopold, "is a disaster. I thought so, I felt that, but I cannot control it; I must and I do hate."

"That," said the hermit, "is very terrible; worse for you than for the person you hate."

"I know," said Leopold. "It is unavoidable; I hate because I am weak—I have no courage to defend myself openly therefore I revenge myself secretly."

He dropped his slender right hand from his cheek and clasped it in his left across his knee. The hermit noted the grace and fineness of those hands.

"You are very young and elegant to deal in such deep matters," he observed.

"I am," sighed Leopold, "both young and foolish, and extremely distressed; I go here and there to find comfort."

"You think you might discover it in my retreat?" suggested the hermit.

"It is possible, but not, I think, very probable."

"You look to me like one of those worldly men who will only find consolation from worldly disasters in worldly affairs."

"Don't talk to me of the world," said Leopold, "for there I have been utterly defeated."

Against the grand and jocund landscape he saw the slight figure of a dreaming girl standing on the balcony in the early sunshine, her eyes, or her lips, or her whole being, saying, "Don't go away,"—and he had gone; ridden away, shamed.

"What is your station in life," asked the hermit, "who are already so young and so troubled?"

"My station in life," said Leopold, "is my greatest trouble. I want to escape from it and I can't."

"It is yourself you cannot escape from," said the hermit, "not your station. If you were to live up here with me you would not be able to escape either."

"You, then," urged Leopold, "are as unhappy here as you were in the world?"

The hermit replied that he had never been unhappy anywhere.

Leopold gazed forlornly round the luxurious landscape.

"Yesterday this seemed magic to me," he complained, "but to-day it seems all tarnished, the bloom rubbed off, the trees look rusty and the water foul, the sky void."

"You, I suppose," remarked the hermit, "think that Nature takes the colour of men's moods. Nature, of course, is quite indifferent as to whether you admire her or don't admire her; whether she is beautiful or ugly in your sight."

"That is true," said Leopold gloomily. "Yesterday, as I said, I felt that I was in a paradise; now I seem to see grim rocks, a dreadful whirl of purposeless water, expanses of haunted forests."

"You speak very extravagantly," smiled the hermit. "I think you are one of those fantastic young men who are rather fond of indulging in fabling dreams and the grotesque and unlikely."

"My story," replied Leopold, "is most commonplace. There is nothing grotesque or unlikely about it. I am merely weak and foolish—overweighted by my own cowardice, my own failure, the sense that I shall be driven to do something mean and vile—yes, I feel I shall commit some dreadful action!"

The old, dry man received these outbursts placidly. He did not seem in the least moved either by the stranger's presence or by his emotion; he occupied himself in gazing at his goats and rearranging their ropes round the stump of the tree where he had fastened them.

"You seem," remarked Leopold, ironically, "to find those animals more interesting than myself."

"They are certainly," smiled the hermit, "more peaceful companions."

"Well," said Leopold, "I'll go on my way. I am bound for Vienna."

"Vienna is no doubt a beautiful city—I was there once in my youth."

"Whether it is beautiful or not, I don't know," said Leopold. "I see very little of it. I spend my time in one vast house surrounded by dull and tiresome people who plague me to do this and that, things that I detest doing, things that I don't even wish to hear of."

"I don't know how I can help you."

"I thought," sighed the young man, "that you might tell me the secret of peace."

"How can I tell you that? It's like talking to a general who wants to know how to set various troops in order. If you have not the power of authority, no one can give it to you. If you can't command your own soul, how can I give you enlightenment how to do so?"

"Do you think," asked Leopold, desperately, "if I were to live as you live here, retired to some cave, some grotto overlooking the Danube, with a couple of goats and my fruit trees and my little bit of garden—live here, I could forget?"

"Forget what?"

"Forget my own weakness."

"No, because that very weakness would drive you back into the world, and you would fret and fume here as much as you do in a palace—"

"How do you know that I have anything to do with palaces?" demanded Leopold.

"I don't know," replied the hermit, "but I guessed; you have a strange air that does not fit into any occupation that I know of. I put you down as one who does live in—well, grand houses, one who has always been waited on, pampered, flattered, spoiled, eh? Why is Vienna so particularly detestable to you? Why do you go there? There are other places even in Austria. Though I hear that everywhere there is tumult and war, there must be a corner of the earth for a young man like you, comely enough and I suppose rich enough to find a little pleasure."

"To find pleasure," said Leopold, "is not exactly what I wish."

"What do you exactly wish?" asked the hermit. "Though, of course, that is a foolish question. No man knows his own mind."

"I know mine," answered Leopold at once. "I wish to be noble; I wish to act with grandeur."

"That," said the hermit, "is not a very likely thing for you to accomplish. I don't read you as one likely to be either grand or noble. Still, who knows? You are very young."

"I am not," remarked Leopold, "perhaps so young as you think. It seems to me that I have lived a hundred years and every one of them boring."

He felt infinitely lonely and forlorn; there was no help to be got here; he stared at the hermit with a sense of hostility; the man's face looked sinister, mocking, imbecile as one of his own goats or that statue of Pan under which Christian had lounged.

It now seemed impossible to him that he could face again Hensdorff, or Prince Christian, whose services he had bought at such a terrible price—the price of his own character—his own soul. He had committed before many actions which seemed even to himself weak and foolish; but never before had he committed such an action as that in which he had abandoned Princess Eleanora to Christian.

He could not defend himself, nor explain himself; he viewed the events of the last few days with complete misery: misery which seemed to him degrading. But he had not even the strength left to turn aside, to abandon everything and remain with this man even for a few days in this lonely place. He was afraid of Hensdorff finding him, afraid of Father St. Nikola coming down from Mölk to argue with him; afraid of the whole pack of them on his trail, hunting and hounding him. He would rather go to Vienna and face them than that they should follow him, track him down, round him up, bear him away—for he was utterly unable to resist them.

"Did you ever," he cried, "hear a more grotesque title than that of Caesar Augustus?"

"I suppose," remarked the hermit, "it is founded on truth, and one day meant something."

"To-day," said Leopold, "it means nothing." And he asked, miserably: "Don't you think we've got to the end of things? Do you think that things can really go on any further? Everything seems to me stale—worse than stale, rotten, done for, corrupt, falling to pieces with decay."

"What do you mean by 'everything'?" asked the hermit cautiously.

"I mean the world, our civilization—corrupt, rotten!"

"You don't think," mused the hermit, "that there is anything more to come—that we can go any further—that good, perhaps, is coming out of all this evil, new life out of the rotting ground?"

"New life?" cried Leopold. "I don't. I think that everything is done for, finished. I see no hope in any direction, anywhere—"

The hermit said he was not talking about a resurrection, but of something new coming from something old. What it was, he declared, it was impossible to see, but surely something out of corruption, a new life...

Leopold saw nothing of this. He saw everything round him as he had said: decayed, stinking.

"You must have been very unfairly treated," smiled the hermit, "to have come to this conclusion so soon in your career. You bother and disturb me, sitting there looking so gloomy, with your pale face and downcast eyes. I wish you'd go on your way and leave me to myself."

"You are not, then, sufficient of a philosopher," said Leopold with some irony, "to contemplate the misery of another with equanimity?"

"I have no philosophy at all," remarked the hermit. "I am merely getting through life somehow—as best I can, I suppose."

Leopold rose. He found no more consolation here than he had found with the Jesuits or with the monks, with Hensdorff or with Christian. All the whole world seemed to have become distorted, he remarked—even the landscape, which was stale, tawdry, ugly, brutal.

"I believe I could have been saved from all this," he remarked, "but I threw my chance away. Yesterday in a wood I saw something that seemed as if it were going to save me."

"Well?" asked the hermit, waiting.

"I hadn't the courage to follow it up. I hadn't the courage to take it."

"Perhaps it would not have helped you had you done so. Very often these are delusions—these supposed chances."

"This was no deception," declared Leopold. "If I had been left alone, and if I had had the strength to do what I wanted to do: if I had followed her—"

The hermit pounced on the word.

"Her! It's a woman, then, at the bottom of it all? Just a commonplace love affair!"

"No," cried Leopold, violently, "no! I don't love any one or anything; there's no love affair in this. I am thinking of myself—of my own character—what happened to me; what I lost yesterday and shall never get again."

He drew his cloak round him and walked rapidly away down the ravine, following the path made by the hermit in his comings to and fro.

He felt now that this fantastic conversation had proved a further act of folly on his part; no good had been gained by it—in fact, only further confusion. There was no way out for him. If he could not face breaking away from life, he must face life, or—

He paused on the crazy little wooden bridge which had been built by the monks over the ravine, and looked down into the bubbling floods below. He would really have liked to end everything that way, but a certain cowardice held him back. He had been brave enough in battle on several occasions, but he could not face the sudden plunge into the black waters which foamed beneath the bridge. Sighing, he thought of Eleanora; he thought of her with tenderness and sentiment. He believed, if he preserved his own life, he might be useful to her one of these ugly days. He might be able to be of some service to her, secretly, just as in the same way he might be able to be of some disservice to Christian, also secretly. What had Hensdorff hinted? When he had done with the mercenary soldier he might be revenged on him, in the same way that Ferdinand of Styria had been revenged on Wallenstein.

This was a cruel thought from which the fastidious mind of Leopold shrank; yet it came again and again, and he almost encouraged it. Yes, it was the sole pleasure that for the moment he knew: the thought that one day he might be revenged on Christian. Revenge! That was a very stupid and childish word! Yet he liked to turn it over and over. It would be pleasant if one day he could make a mock of Christian, see him down beneath him, be able to show him mercy or compassion, or hardness or justice, just as he chose! How scornful, how insolent Christian had been! How he had flouted him, sneered at him, humiliated him! And worse than that: how he had most violently got him into a corner and pinned him down to a mean, despicable action!

Leopold, staring at the dark water below and the dark rocks above, the bright, pale sky high above the precipice, thought that he would like to live, not so much in the thought of proving one day of service to Eleanora, but in avenging himself—yes, he could think of no other word than revenge—on Christian.

Well he knew the hurt of hatred; well he knew that he, and not Christian, would be hurt by this passionate loathing. But he could not control it, much less cast it off. He could not help indulging the hope that one day he might see that dark, beautiful face flushed with shame or rage, see that erect, dandified figure bent in misery or pain, see the superb, insolent, arrogant base-born adventurer completely and absolutely at his mercy—the mercy of Imperial Caesar.

He brooded over these hot thoughts as he returned to the inn. After all, Hensdorff was confident that Christian would put him on the Imperial throne and make him Emperor indeed. Hensdorff was shrewd enough; he might be right.

Emperor Caesar! Well, that would mean some power—even in these days—the most splendid of pretensions yet. Meanwhile, Eleanora must suffer, as he had no doubt she had already suffered—and the thought of this suffering was unbearable. There was his sister, too: another forsaken woman on his conscience; he had to tell her how Christian had rejected her hand. She would not take that easily, he knew: proud and sensitive, as he was proud and sensitive; weak and foolish as he was weak and foolish. She would ill be able to endure the atrocious slight.

Well, he had paid Christian his price; there was always that to remember. Now he would have what he had paid for: no doubt the man was a great general; if he was able to hold back the Allies now sweeping across the Empire, Leopold might indeed be Emperor at last. And once he was Emperor he would be able to adjust these things, the affairs of Eleanora, the affairs of his sister, the affairs of Christian himself; he might, he brooded, even be avenged on all of them—even on Father St. Nikola, who, he felt, had betrayed him; even on Hensdorff, who, he knew, had betrayed him; even on that miserable weakling, Anhalt-Dessau, the old ruffian! He thought with desperate irritation of all these people. No one had stood by him—no one had tried to strengthen him. They had all been against him, in a conspiracy against him and his honour. Well, perhaps one day he might be able to form a conspiracy against them! For he would have power when he had conquered the Allies, when he was Emperor, and Christian had been paid...

"I," mused Leopold, half aloud, "when I am Emperor, will have no more pity on them than they will have pity on me! They have no pity on my weakness and folly: I will have no pity on their greed and their treachery."

He returned to the inn, fetched his horse, and turned reluctantly towards his ostentatious capital. Slower and slower he rode; everything oppressed him—even the magnificence of the scenery and the brightness of the sunshine.

He lost the sense of his own identity—felt as one of the meanest of those who, Hensdorff declared, were his subjects; felt fellowship with the wretched peasantry whom he saw by the roadside, working in the fields heavy with the harvest, or wandering by the river banks.

He slept that night in another poor inn, and with the dawn was on the road again. Linger as he would, he must at last see the towers of Vienna in the distance, rising golden and glorious in the suffuse and glowing evening light.

How alien and hateful the city was to him! How he wished he were returning to the pleasant squares and noble streets of Munich, on his native plain of Bavaria.

He cursed the remote and hateful connection with the Hapsburgs, which had given him the dangerous destiny of honour to which he was so unsuited. A man like Christian should have worn the diadem...There was the type needed, there was the hard cruelty, the cold arrogance of one who should assume the dictatorship of mankind.

Leopold muffled his cloak round his shoulders and pulled down his hat, fearful lest one of the now more frequent passers-by should recognize him for what he was—the Emperor.

He enjoyed a vague and elusive popularity in Vienna. A gay and light-hearted people did homage to his charm and his youth and sincerity. But he was now in no mood for popular acclamation. The nearer he approached to the gates, the more he began nervously to worry over his meeting with his sister and the Countess Carola. On the one he had to inflict a disappointment, and on the other a slight, for he did not intend to renew any intimacy with the woman for whom he had so long indulged in a sentimental friendship.

That glimpse of Eleanora had made him loathe the image of the Countess Carola. He was, too, shudderingly sensitive on the subject of his sister; hateful as it had been to offer her to Christian, how much more hateful to have to tell her that she had been refused. She would, no doubt, be relieved by her escape, but she would detest the manner of her escape.

He was fond of his sister; he wished to protect her, yet, because she was like himself, she irritated him: she had the same faults, the same failings, the same weaknesses, the same facile charm and delicate grace. Looking at her he felt as if he were looking into a mirror. He wished she had been different: to correct her was to correct himself, to chide her was to chide himself.

He passed into the crowded streets, where the people went cheerfully to and fro beneath the florid palaces as if there were no such things as war or politics.

No one recognized him. Indeed, he looked travel-stained and weary enough, and his notable face was hidden.

"If I had never returned from this secret journey," he thought, bitterly, "what would they have done? Found another puppet, I suppose! At least I can hardly believe that I would have been missed!"

But he had returned. He had not had the strength to stay away. His impressionable nature seemed to receive a stimulus from the gaiety of the beautiful town. The images of Eleanora and Christian seemed to fade away under the influence of gay and opulent streets—the traffic of coaches, people on horse and foot.

He rode slowly and unobserved past the arid stiff magnificence of his own overpowering palace, the Hofburg, and into the Court of Honour—blank and bleak beneath the blank, bleak facade.

The lackeys lounging in the great doorway were the first to recognize him; the Imperial Hussars had failed to do so. He put them aside impatiently and went direct to his own apartments through tedious, glittering corridors. He was weary, and had a headache; his limbs were fatigued by three days' riding.

After hastily and carelessly adjusting his toilet in the alien, pompous room, he sent for the Archduchess, as the Princess Maria Luisa was named since her father's brief and precarious elevation.

This agitated, expectant lady came at once, with a pale face and a look of alarm, which further vexed the despondent Leopold. They embraced each other with nervous and timid affection.

"Oh!" she exclaimed, hysterically, "how delighted I am to have you back! How long it has seemed since you have been away! Was it any use? Have you had any success? It is so dull here!"

"Success!" he echoed, bitterly. "Well, I don't know; I've struck a bargain with Christian of Kurland, as he calls himself."

"A bargain?" she repeated, timidly, biting her full lip.

"Yes; but you are out of that pact."

The words sounded brutal. He wished he could recall them; but how else put the matter?

She flushed hotly—she had his defect of easy blushing—and said:

"What do you mean, Leopold? This is grossly put."

"I mean I have been able to spare you. It is another woman's sacrifice."

"Sacrifice?" replied Maria Luisa, bewildered. "Who has been sacrificed?"

Leopold could not mention the name of the Princess Eleanora. He replied impatiently, and with a touch of temper:

"It does not matter to you; the bargain has been made. Prince Christian is going to command my armies. It was Hensdorff's affair, not mine. You must ask him for the tale."

"The tale, what do you mean, Leopold?" she asked, blushingly hesitant and nervous. "Did you go to Prince Christian with an offer of my hand?" she added with faltering insistence.

"I was able," replied Leopold, "to spare you; at least we have not come to that degradation. Prince Christian will take charge of my armies without the price of your hand."

Maria Luisa turned away abruptly; she appeared extremely disturbed.

"Oh!" she murmured. "And you, and your marriage?"

Leopold laughed, almost hysterically.

"I and my marriage!" he cried. "Well, I did not come to that, either."

"You mean," asked his sister, "that nothing has been arranged? What was the sense, then, of your visit to Anhalt-Dessau?"

"There was no sense," sneered Leopold. "There's no sense in any of us. We're just whirled along, like leaves in a wind. Sense? What do you expect sense for, from me, my dear sister?"

She looked at him apprehensively, with, he thought, temper and fear; and he resented this though he knew she had been badly treated.

"You'd better ask Hensdorff that," he replied in vexation. "I can't talk now; I've been riding all day, and my head aches. I'm exhausted."

"I, too, am exhausted. The tension here has been intolerable; the situation impossible. I wish we had remained in Munich, and not undertaken any of this!"

"Don't voice my own weakness!" he cried, in yet deeper vexation. "That, too, is what I wish. But what is the use of it? Here we are, and we haven't the strength to get out; therefore we've got to find the strength to go on."

"Where's Hensdorff?" she asked, lost and bewildered.

"Where's Hensdorff? Hensdorff is coming; and, as I say, you'd better ask him all about these things—about Eleanora, about Christian, about our marriages, about everything. I believed he had found a wife for me and a husband for you. Ask him!"

"You're overwrought," murmured the Archduchess. "Something has gone wrong!"

He did not deny this.

"It has been dreadful here," she went on, trembling. "Dreadful. I haven't known where to turn or what to do."

He frowned, with pity for her and contempt for himself, and compassion for both of them.

"Christian will save us, no doubt," he exclaimed. "We must both rely on Christian, this Kurland upstart."

She winced before the bitterness of this sneer; she was altogether dismayed, undone, frightened.

"How will you have any hold over Christian?" she asked him, on a half sob.

Leopold took a desperate turn or two about the splendid, over-furnished long and lofty salon.

"Because he has been paid!" he cried with violence. "I've paid him all he asked. A fine price, too."

"What price?" asked Maria Luisa, still more startled. "What price have you paid him?"

She spoke in a low, agitated voice, but it echoed horribly in the veering heart of Leopold. The question made him aghast; it was one he could not answer; in his own dismay he felt a random impulse of pity for his sister, standing there so childlike and distressed in her tight-laced heavy gown and ponderous headdress. He put his arm round her slender shoulders, and looked at her affectionately with wrinkled brows above his blue eyes. She clung to him immediately with an instant response to his affectionate caress; they stood close together in this magnificent void as if for protection against the assaults of destiny; they stared into the vast mirror in front of them, reflecting so many other mirrors, so many tall doors—reflections and exits encircled them; and in each of those long, pale faces, with those Imperial features showing in the glass like drowned shadows in a lake, was apprehension leaping into alarm.