leged to sit on the divan behind us as immediate attendant. There
was an honesty in Ylga's face which Phorenice's lacked.

They did not eat to nutrify their bodies, these feasters in the
banqueting-hall of the royal pyramid, but they all ate to cloy
themselves, and they strutted forth new usages with every platter and
bowl that the slaves brought. To me some of their manners were
closely touching on disrespect. At the halfway of the meal, a gorgeous
popinjay--he was a governor of an out-province driven into the capital
by a rebellion in his own lands--this gorgeous fop, I say, walked up
between the groups of feasters with flushed face and unsteady gait, and
did obeisance before the divan. "Most astounding Empress," cried he,
"fairest among the Goddesses, Queen regnant of my adoring heart, hail!"

Phorenice with a smile stretched him out her cup. I looked to see him
pour respectful libation, but no such thing. He set the drink to his
lips and drained it to the final drop. "May all your troubles," he
cried, "pass from you as easily, and leave as pleasant a flavour."

The Empress turned to me with one of her quick looks. "You do not like
this new habit?"

To which I replied bluntly enough that to pour out liquor at a person's
feet had grown through custom to be a mark of respect, but that drinking
it seemed to me mere self-indulgence, which might be practised anywhere.

"You still keep to the old austere teachings," she said. "Our newer code
bids us enjoy life first, and order other things so as not to meddle
with our more immediate pleasure."

And so the feast went on, the guests practising their gluttonies and
their absurdities, and the guards standing to their arms round the
circuit of the walls as motionless and as stern as the statues carven
in the white stone beyond them. But a term was put to the orgy with
something of suddenness. There was a stir at the farther doorway of the
banqueting-hall, and a clash, as two of the guards joined their spears
across the entrance. But the man they tried to stop--or perhaps it was
to pin--passed them unharmed, and walked up over the pavement between
the lights, and the groups of feasters. All looked round at him; a few
threw him ribald words; but none ventured to stop his progress. A few,
women chiefly, I could see, shuddered as he passed them by, as though a
wintry chill had come over them; and in the end he walked up and stood
in front of Phorenice's divan, and gazed fixedl