emained for the final figure of the dance. Then she left the palace,
and, declining the Count's company, drove to her _Hotel_ alone.

She was more strangely moved than she could have explained to herself.
She was, indeed, frightened and perplexed by her own feelings. She felt
herself influenced by an hitherto unrecognised power, and, as it were,
driven onwards by an overpowering impulse, not her own.

Returning, as she did, at an unexpected hour, her women were not in
waiting for her, and, leaving the servants who had accompanied her from
the palace in the hall of the _Hotel_, she wandered up the great
staircase alone. The corridors and rooms were dimly lighted, and a
perfect stillness reigned through the house.

The Princess ascended slowly towards her own apartment, where she
expected to find some, at least, of her dressers, and in so doing, in a
dimly-lighted corridor, she passed the rooms allotted to her children.
The thought of them was not, indeed, in her mind when, as she passed a
door, she fancied that she heard a suppressed, continued crying, as of
children in distress. Still more moved and troubled by this faint
pathetic sound she opened the door and went in. The room was an
antechamber, and both it and the apartment beyond were dark. The
Princess procured a small lamp from the corridor and entered the suite
of rooms.

In the bedchamber beyond the antechamber she found the children, both
sitting up in one bed, clasped in each other's arms, and crying quietly.
The little boy had evidently come for shelter and comfort to his
sister's bed.

"What is the matter, children?" said the Princess, in a tone which
seemed to the little ones strangely soft and kind. "Why are you not
asleep?"

The children had ceased crying, and were looking at her wonderingly as
she stood in her jewels and ball-dress, a brilliant scarf of Indian work
hanging from her arm, the lamp in her hand. They hardly knew whether it
was their mother, whom they saw so seldom, or some serene ethereal
visitant, who resembled her in face and form.

The little Princess, however, with the self-possession of her class,
apparently left this point undecided, and began in her quiet, stately
little way to explain.

"It was dark," she said, "and we were asleep, Fritz and I, and we both
dreamed the same dream. We thought that we were walking in a beautiful
garden, where there were trees, and flowers, and butterflies, and wide
cascades of water, in which