It was the same room into which I had first been shown.  Zara seated herself, and made me occupy a low chair beside her.

“Tell me,” she said, “can you not come here and stay with me while you are under Casimir’s treatment?”

I thought of Madame Denise and her Pension.

“I wish I could,” I said; “but I fear my friends would want to know where I am staying, and explanations would have to be given, which I do not feel disposed to enter upon.”

“Why,” went on Zara quietly, “you have only to say that you are being attended by a Dr. Casimir who wishes to have you under his own supervision, and that you are therefore staying in his house under the chaperonage of his sister.”

I laughed at the idea of Zara playing the chaperon, and told her she was far too young and beautiful to enact that character.

“Do you know how old I am?” she asked, with a slight smile.

I guessed seventeen, or at any rate not more than twenty.

“I am thirty-eight,” said Zara.

Thirty-eight!  Impossible!  I would not believe it.  I could not.  I laughed scornfully at such an absurdity, looking at her as she sat there a perfect model of youthful grace and loveliness, with her lustrous eyes and rose-tinted complexion.

“You may doubt me if you choose,” she said, still smiling; “but I have told you the truth.  I am thirty-eight years of age according to the world’s counting.  What I am, measured by another standard of time, matters not just now.  You see I look young, and, what is more, I am young.  I enjoy my youth.  I hear that women of society at thirty-eight are often faded and blase—­what a pity it is that they do not understand the first laws of self-preservation!  But to resume what I was saying, you know now that I am quite old enough in the eyes of the world to chaperon you or anybody.  You had better arrange to stay here.  Casimir asked me to settle the matter with, you.”

As she spoke, Heliobas and Prince Ivan entered.  The latter looked flushed and excited—­Heliobas was calm and stately as usual.  He addressed himself to me at once.

“I have ordered my carriage, mademoiselle, to take you back this evening to the Avenue du Midi.  If you will do as Zara tells you, and explain to your friends the necessity there is for your being under the personal supervision of your doctor, you will find everything will arrange itself very naturally.  And the sooner you come here the better—­in fact, Zara will expect you here to-morrow early in the afternoon.  I may rely upon you?”

He spoke with a certain air of command, evidently expecting no resistance on my part.  Indeed, why should I resist?  Already I loved Zara, and wished to be more in her company; and then, most probably, my complete restoration to health would be more successfully and quickly accomplished if I were actually in the house of the man who had promised to cure me.  Therefore I replied: