ve me up then?"

"Give you up--?"

"You forsake me at the hour of my life when it seems to me I most
deserve a friend's loyalty? If you do you're not just, Fanny; you're
even, I think," she went on, "rather cruel; and it's least of all
worthy of you to seem to wish to quarrel with me in order to cover your
desertion." She spoke, at the same time, with the noblest moderation of
tone, and the image of high, pale, lighted disappointment she meanwhile
presented, as of a creature patient and lonely in her splendour, was an
impression so firmly imposed that she could fill her measure to the
brim and yet enjoy the last word, as it is called in such cases, with a
perfection void of any vulgarity of triumph. She merely completed,
for truth's sake, her demonstration. "What is a quarrel with me but a
quarrel with my right to recognise the conditions of my bargain? But I
can carry them out alone," she said as she turned away. She turned
to meet the Ambassador and the Prince, who, their colloquy with their
Field-Marshal ended, were now at hand and had already, between them, she
was aware, addressed her a remark that failed to penetrate the golden
glow in which her intelligence was temporarily bathed. She had made
her point, the point she had foreseen she must make; she had made it
thoroughly and once for all, so that no more making was required; and
her success was reflected in the faces of the two men of distinction
before her, unmistakably moved to admiration by her exceptional
radiance. She at first but watched this reflection, taking no note of
any less adequate form of it possibly presented by poor Fanny--poor
Fanny left to stare at her incurred "score," chalked up in so few
strokes on the wall; then she took in what the Ambassador was saying, in
French, what he was apparently repeating to her.

"A desire for your presence, Madame, has been expressed en tres-haut
lieu, and I've let myself in for the responsibility, to say nothing of
the honour, of seeing, as the most respectful of your friends, that
so august an impatience is not kept waiting." The greatest possible
Personage had, in short, according to the odd formula of societies
subject to the greatest personages possible, "sent for" her, and she
asked, in her surprise, "What in the world does he want to do to me?"
only to know, without looking, that Fanny's bewilderment was called to
a still larger application, and to hear the Prince say with authority,
indeed with a cer