nd I was at Capri seven days after you had left.'

'You knew my name then?'

'Be not too curious with necromancers. Here is the date--March 15th. You
departed on the 8th.'

'I think I did. That is a year from now.'

'Then we missed: now we meet. It is a year lost. A year is a great age!
Reflect on it and what you owe me. How I wished for a comrade at Capri!
Not a "young lady," and certainly no man. The understanding Feminine,
was my desire--a different thing from the feminine understanding,
usually. I wanted my comrade young and fair, necessarily of your sex,
but with heart and brain: an insane request, I fancied, until I heard
that you were the person I wanted. In default of you I paraded the
island with Tiberius, who is my favourite tyrant. We took the initiative
against the patricians, at my suggestion, and the Annals were written by
a plebeian demagogue, instead of by one of that party, whose account of
my extinction by command of the emperor was pathetic. He apologized
in turn for my imperial master and me, saying truly, that the
misunderstanding between us was past cement: for each of us loved the
man but hated his office; and as the man is always more in his office
than he is in himself, clearly it was the lesser portion of our friend
that each of us loved. So, I, as the weaker, had to perish, as he would
have done had I been the stronger; I admitted it, and sent my emperor
my respectful adieux, with directions for the avoiding of assassins.
Mademoiselle, by delaying your departure seven days you would have saved
me from death. You see, the official is the artificial man, and I ought
to have known there is no natural man left in us to weigh against the
artificial. I counted on the emperor's personal affection, forgetting
that princes cannot be our friends.'

'You died bravely?'

Clotilde entered into the extravagance with a happy simulation of zest.

'Simply, we will say. My time had come, and I took no sturdy pose,
but let the life-stream run its course for a less confined embankment.
Sapphire sea, sapphire sky: one believes in life there, thrills with it,
when life is ebbing: ay, as warmly as when life is at the flow in our
sick and shrivelled North--the climate for dried fish! Verily the second
death of hearing that a gold-haired Lucretia had been on the island
seven days earlier, was harder to bear. Tell me frankly--the music in
Italy?'

'Amorous and martial, brainless and monotonous.'

'Excellent!