nitz
lingered. Yes; there from the ceiling her own face looked down at her in
two bas-reliefs. In one the face was smiling with half-open, voluptuous
lips, and the eyes, a little drooping, told of some delicious thrill of
passion. Opposite this was the figure of Time, winged and frowning, with
huge scythe-blades in his mighty hands. She shuddered; those relentless
blades had indeed mown down the little day of her love's triumph. What
devil had prompted the Italian Frisoni to illustrate this terrible truth
upon the very palace built to honour her?

Across the entrance-hall she saw another bas-relief, again her face, but
serious this time, looking fixedly, gravely upwards--the expression of
one who aspires, of one who would compel Destiny. Facing this was a
medallion bearing a ducal crown in the centre, the scroll-work round this
medallion was made of giant thorns, and a peering, mocking satyr's face
peeped out from the thorn wreath.

Had the Italian dared to mock her thus? And in the old days she had not
noted the insolent meaning underlying the beautiful designs! How she
would have revenged herself upon the artist!

She turned away. After all, the man had spoken truly in his sculptured
allegory: Time, and Change, and Death are more mighty than Love, than
Joy, than Power. She mused on, and unconsciously her wanderings, led by
old custom's memory, brought her to the vaulted arcade beside the door of
the east pavilion where she had dwelt. Here, too, her own face met her in
the bas-reliefs. Graceful designs of musical instruments, emblems of her
taste, and everywhere laughing Cupids held wreathed flowers, viole
d'amore, harps and lutes around the mistress-musician's voluptuous face.

The carven stone held for ever the memory of Eberhard Ludwig's homage in
the beauteous picturing of Love, Laughter, Music--all that she had
wielded with such potency to charm; and she knew that the sneering
artist-architect had hidden everywhere the figure of Time the Avenger;
sometimes she had called him the Consoler, but she knew him better now as
the Eternally Pitiless, waiting to reap his harvest--the flowers reaped
with the wheat.

Suddenly the full message came to her: 'All things wither, but the
remembrance of the sinful light of love is bitter pain, whereas the
memory of the pure woman is sweet with children's tears.' She had read
the words in some book, they smote her now. In an agony of weeping she
leaned her head against the sto