His friends quitted him at a motion of the elbows.  He knelt on the sofa, leaning across it, with clasped hands.

’You are she!—­So, then, is a contradiction of me to be the commencement?’

‘After the apparition of Hamlet’s father the prince was mad,’ said Clotilde hurriedly, and she gazed for her hostess, a paroxysm of alarm succeeding that of her boldness.

‘Why should we two wait to be introduced?’ said he.  ’We know one another.  I am Alvan.  You are she of whom I heard from Kollin:  who else?  Lucretia the gold-haired; the gold-crested serpent, wise as her sire; Aurora breaking the clouds; in short, Clotilde!’

Her heart exulted to hear him speak her name.  She laughed with a radiant face.  His being Alvan, and his knowing her and speaking her name, all was like the happy reading of a riddle.  He came round to her, bowing, and his hand out.  She gave hers:  she could have said, if asked, ‘For good!’ And it looked as though she had given it for good.

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.’