SS [_rather bored_]

No? What would you put there?

PRINCE

In the very centre of your temple I would place a faun with swift,
strange limbs, crisp, serpentine hair, and the smile of a demon.

DUCHESS [_turning to him slowly_]

The smile of a demon? I think that would be enchanting. Ah, how tired
I am, I think I will go and rest. What in the world is one tired from?
What does one rest for----

[_She pauses in rather a lost manner._]

PRINCE

Yes, do go and rest, for tomorrow you must be radiant as a new-blown
flower in the first rays of the sun.

DUCHESS

[_Turning to him with a faint curiosity._]

I suppose that afterwards my appearance will please you, even if my
spirits are never particularly high.

PRINCE

I do not care about your spirits. I do not care about your soul. I
love the pliant rippling motion of your pensive youth. I love your
imperial beauty, for it throws open the last sealed chambers of my own
fancy.

DUCHESS

Fancy--fancy--I have fancied so many things.

[_The sound of an approaching flute is heard together with the
creaking of a carriage._]

A strange sound, what can it be?

[_During the ensuing speeches the creaking and the flute come
nearer._]

PRINCE

Josephine, our life together will be exquisite. It will be as the
lives of the Romans in Greece--a bacchanale of peculiar formalities.
We will bury conscience in the poppy-haunted air of exhausting
revelry. We will----

DUCHESS

O Charles, you talk exactly like those men who design my dresses, but
look----

[_Her eyes are riveted upon a curious cavalcade crossing from
right to left of stage, first a very small house on wheels drawn
by a large wolf-dog; at its side, walking, an old man, his head
bent in deep thought. He wears the cap and gown of a doctor of
philosophy. After him, with dark hair falling almost to the
ground about her pallid face, is walking a girl of extraordinary
beauty. She is looking rigidly ahead of her and is being guided
by a white ribbon suspended from the back of the cart. A few
paces behind her comes a sinuous, coffee-skinned slave girl with
that erect majesty of one who has worn crowns or carried water
pitchers through generations. Behind the slave follows the flute
player, a mountebank, horribly twisted in some manner not visible
in the twilight. The PRINCE, who has permitted the carriage to go