after
all, and didn't look a day over twenty-eight. How did she manage to
preserve the illusion of youth? She turned to him, and he saw the
contour of a face Oriental, with eyes that allured and a mouth that
invited. A desirable but dangerous woman, and he fell to thinking of the
other, of her air of girlhood, her innocence of poise, her calm of
breeding that nothing disturbed. Like a good pose in the saddle, nothing
could ever unseat the equanimity of Elizabeth. Mrs. Holda grew
distasteful for the moment and her voice sounded metallic.

"When you cease your perverse mooning, Harry Tannhaeuser, when you make
up your mind once and for all which woman you intend to choose, when you
decide between Elizabeth Landgrave and Venus Holda, I shall be most
happy. As it is now I am"--Just then two cards were handed her by a
footman, and after looking at them she laughed a mellow laugh.
Tannhaeuser sat up and asked her the news.

"I laugh because the situation is so funny," she said; "here are your
two friends come to visit you and perhaps attempt your rescue from the
Venusberg. Oh! for a Wagner now! What appropriate music he could set to
this situation." She gave him the cards, and to his consternation he
read the names of Elizabeth Landgrave and Wolfram Eschenbach. He started
up in savage humor and was for going to the reception room. Quite calmly
Mrs. Holda bade him stay where he was.

"They did not ask for you, Harry, dear; stay here and be a good boy, and
I'll tell you all about it when they've gone." Her laughter was
resilient as she descended the staircase, but to the young man it seemed
sinister. He felt that hope had abandoned him when he entered the Berg
Street house, and now Elizabeth's presence, instead of relieving his
dull remorse, increased it. She was under the same roof with him, yet he
could not go to her....

Tannhaeuser paced the parquetry almost hidden by Bokhara rugs, trying to
forget the girl. Stopping before an elaborate ebony and gold lectern, he
found a volume in vellum, opened and in it he read: "Livre des grandes
Merveilles d'amour, escript en Latin et en francoys par Maistre Antoine
Gaget 1530." "Has love its marvels?" pondered the disquieted young man.
Turning over the title-page he came upon these words in sweet old
English:

"Then lamented he weeping: Alas, most unhappy and accursed sinner that I
am, in that I shall never see the clemency and mercy of my God. Now will
I go forth and hide mysel