lowers. He had picked
up a trifle, he said, which was rather a curiosity, it was an ancient
Greek dagger of the Mycenaean Epoch, and might well have been worn in
the time of Theseus and Hippolyta. It was made of brass like all the
Heroic weapons, but, oddly enough, sharp enough to prick anyone still.
He had really been attracted to it by the leaf-like shape; it was as
perfect as a Greek vase. If it was of any interest to Miss Rome or could
come in anywhere in the play, he hoped she would--

The inner door burst open and a big figure appeared, who was more of
a contrast to the explanatory Seymour than even Captain Cutler. Nearly
six-foot-six, and of more than theatrical thews and muscles, Isidore
Bruno, in the gorgeous leopard skin and golden-brown garments of Oberon,
looked like a barbaric god. He leaned on a sort of hunting-spear, which
across a theatre looked a slight, silvery wand, but which in the small
and comparatively crowded room looked as plain as a pike-staff--and as
menacing. His vivid black eyes rolled volcanically, his bronzed
face, handsome as it was, showed at that moment a combination of
high cheekbones with set white teeth, which recalled certain American
conjectures about his origin in the Southern plantations.

"Aurora," he began, in that deep voice like a drum of passion that had
moved so many audiences, "will you--"

He stopped indecisively because a sixth figure had suddenly presented
itself just inside the doorway--a figure so incongruous in the scene as
to be almost comic. It was a very short man in the black uniform of
the Roman secular clergy, and looking (especially in such a presence as
Bruno's and Aurora's) rather like the wooden Noah out of an ark. He
did not, however, seem conscious of any contrast, but said with dull
civility: "I believe Miss Rome sent for me."

A shrewd observer might have remarked that the emotional temperature
rather rose at so unemotional an interruption. The detachment of a
professional celibate seemed to reveal to the others that they stood
round the woman as a ring of amorous rivals; just as a stranger coming
in with frost on his coat will reveal that a room is like a furnace. The
presence of the one man who did not care about her increased Miss Rome's
sense that everybody else was in love with her, and each in a somewhat
dangerous way: the actor with all the appetite of a savage and a spoilt
child; the soldier with all the simple selfishness of a man of will
r