She looked at me.

“Don’t speak so coldly,” she said.  “Sooner or later we will be intimate, and you may as well lay aside formality now.”

This threatening promise suddenly filled me with great happiness.  I thought of Le Mesge’s words:  “Don’t talk until you have seen her.  When you have seen her, you will renounce everything for her.”

“Have I been in Duras?” she went on with a burst of laughter.  “You are joking.  Imagine Neptune’s granddaughter in the first-class compartment of a local train!”

She pointed to an enormous white rock which towered above the palm trees of the garden.

“That is my horizon,” she said gravely.

She picked up one of several books which lay scattered about her on the lion’s skin.

“The time table of the Chemin de Fer de l’Ouest,” she said.  “Admirable reading for one who never budges!  Here it is half-past five in the afternoon.  A train, a local, arrived three minutes ago at Surgeres in the Charente-Inferieure.  It will start on in six minutes.  In two hours it will reach La Rochelle.  How strange it seems to think of such things here.  So far away!  So much commotion there!  Here, nothing changes.”

“You speak French well,” I said.

She gave a little nervous laugh.

“I have to.  And German, too, and Italian, and English and Spanish.  My way of living has made me a great polygot.  But I prefer French, even to Tuareg and Arabian.  It seems as if I had always known it.  And I am not saying that to please you.”

There was a pause.  I thought of her grandmother, of whom Plutarch said:  “There were few races with which she needed an interpreter.  Cleopatra spoke their own language to the Ethiopians, to the Troglodytes, the Hebrews, the Arabs, the Medes and the Persians.”

“Do not stand rooted in the middle of the room.  You worry me.  Come sit here, beside me.  Move over, King Hiram.”

The leopard obeyed with good temper.

Beside her was an onyx bowl.  She took from it a perfectly plain ring of orichalch and slipped it on my left ring-finger.  I saw that she wore one like it.

“Tanit-Zerga, give Monsieur de Saint-Avit a rose sherbet.”

The dark girl in red silk obeyed.

“My private secretary,” said Antinea, introducing her.  “Mademoiselle Tanit-Zerga, of Gao, on the Niger.  Her family is almost as ancient as mine.”

As she spoke, she looked at me.  Her green eyes seemed to be appraising me.

“And your comrade, the Captain?” she asked in a dreamy tone.  “I have not yet seen him.  What is he like?  Does he resemble you?”

For the first time since I had entered, I thought of Morhange.  I did not answer.

Antinea smiled.

She stretched herself out full length on the lion skin.  Her bare right knee slipped out from under her tunic.

“It is time to go find him,” she said languidly.  “You will soon receive my orders.  Tanit-Zerga, show him the way.  First take him to his room.  He cannot have seen it.”