A red spot
had appeared close by, burned now on blackness; it was followed by
another's footstep. A man, cigar in hand, joined her.
"Ah, Prince!" she said.
He muttered something Heatherbloom did not catch.
"What?" she exclaimed lightly. "No better humored?"
His answer was eloquent. A flicker of light he had moved toward revealed
his face, gallant, romantic enough in its happier moments, but now
distinctly unpleasant, with the stamp of ancestral Sybarites of the
Petersburg court shining through the cruelty and intolerance of
semi-Tartar forbears.
The woman laughed. How the young man, listening, detested that musical
gurgle! "Patience, your Highness!"
The red spark leaped in the air. "What have I been?"
"That depends on the standpoint--yours, or hers," she returned in the
same tone.
"It is always the same. She is--" The spark described swift angry
motions.
"What would you--at first?" she retorted laughingly. "After all that
has taken place? _Mon Dieu_! You remember I advised you against this
madness--I told you in the beginning it might not all be like Watteau's
masterpiece--the divine embarkation!"
"Bah!" he returned, as resenting her attitude.
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