She questioned him imperiously, while he answered humbly in fear. Dmitry stood by, an anxious, strained look on his face, and now and then he put in a word.

Of what danger did they warn her, these two faithful servants? One came from afar for no other purpose, it seemed. Whatever it was she received the news in haughty defiance. She spoke fiercely at first, and they humbled themselves the more. Then Anna appeared, and joined her supplications to theirs, till at last the lady, like a pettish child chasing a brood of tiresome chickens, shooed them all from the room, 'twixt laughter and tears. Then she threw up her arms in rage for a moment, and ran back to the loggia where Paul still slept. Here she sat and looked at him with burning eyes of love.

He was certainly changed in the eighteen days since she had first seen him. His face was thinner, the beautiful lines of youth were drawn with a finer hand. He was paler, too, and a shadow lay under his curly lashes. But even in his sleep it seemed as if his awakened soul had set its seal upon his expression--he had tasted of the knowledge of good and evil now.

The lady crept near him and kissed his hair. Then she flung herself on her own couch, and soon she also slept.

It was six o'clock before they awoke, Paul first--and what was his joy to be able to kneel beside her and watch her for a few seconds before her white lids lifted themselves! An attitude of utter weariness and abandon was hers. She was as a child tired out with passionate weeping, who had fallen to sleep as she had flung herself down. There was something even pathetic about that proud head laid low upon her clasped arms.