CHAPTER IV

‘Hamlet in due season,’ said he, as they sat together.  ’I shall convince you.’

She shook her head.

’Yes, yes, an opinion formed by a woman is inflexible; I know that:  the fact is not half so stubborn.  But at present there are two more important actors:  we are not at Elsinore.  You are aware that I hoped to meet you?’

’Is there a periodical advertisement of your hopes?—­or do they come to us by intuition?’

’Kollin was right!—­the ways of the serpent will be serpentine.  I knew we must meet.  It is no true day so long as the goddess of the morning and the sun-god are kept asunder.  I speak of myself, by what I have felt since I heard of you.’

‘You are sure of your divinity?’

‘Through my belief in yours!’

They bowed smiling at the courtly exchanges.

‘And tell me,’ said he, ‘as to meeting me . . . ?’

She replied:  ’When we are so like the rest of the world we may confess our weakness.’

‘Unlike! for the world and I meet and part:  not we two.’

Clotilde attempted an answer:  it would not come.  She tried to be revolted by his lording tone, and found it strangely inoffensive.  His lording presence and the smile that was like a waving feather on it compelled her so strongly to submit to hear, as to put her in danger of appearing to embrace this man’s rapid advances.

She said:  ‘I first heed of you at Capri.’

‘And I was at Capri seven days after you had left.’

‘You knew my name then?’

’Be not too curious with necromancers.  Here is the date—­March 15th.  You departed on the 8th.’

‘I think I did.  That is a year from now.’

’Then we missed:  now we meet.  It is a year lost.  A year is a great age!  Reflect on it and what you owe me.  How I wished for a comrade at Capri!  Not a “young lady,” and certainly no man.  The understanding Feminine, was my desire—­a different thing from the feminine understanding, usually.  I wanted my comrade young and fair, necessarily of your sex, but with heart and brain:  an insane request, I fancied, until I heard that you were the person I wanted.  In default of you I paraded the island with Tiberius, who is my favourite tyrant.  We took the initiative against the patricians, at my suggestion, and the Annals were written by a plebeian demagogue, instead of by one of that party, whose account of my extinction by command of the emperor was pathetic.  He apologized in turn for my imperial master and me, saying truly, that the misunderstanding between us was past cement:  for each of us loved the man but hated his office; and as the man is always more in his office than he is in himself, clearly it was the lesser portion of our friend that each of us loved.  So, I, as the weaker, had to perish, as he would have done had I been the stronger; I admitted it, and sent my emperor my respectful adieux, with directions for the avoiding of assassins.  Mademoiselle, by delaying your departure seven days you would have saved me from death.  You see, the official is the artificial man, and I ought to have known there is no natural man left in us to weigh against the artificial.  I counted on the emperor’s personal affection, forgetting that princes cannot be our friends.’