For these two had once loved marvelously. Now minstrels
everywhere made songs about their all-conquering love, which had derided
death; and nobody denied that, even now, these two got on together
amicably.

But to-night Dame Niafer was fretted, because the pastry-cook was young
Ruric's cousin, and was, she feared, as likely as not to fling off in a
huff on account of Dom Manuel's having strangled the clerk.

"Well, then do you raise the fellow's wages," said Count Manuel.

"That is easily said, and is exactly like a man. Why, Manuel, you surely
know that then the meat-cook, and the butler, too, would be demanding
more, and that there would be no end to it."

"But, my dear, the boy was talking mad blasphemy, and was for cutting my
throat with a great horn-handled knife."

"Of course that was very wrong of him," said Dame Niafer, comfortably,
"and not for an instant, Manuel, am I defending his conduct, as I trust
you quite understand. But even so, if you had stopped for a moment to
think how hard it is to replace a servant nowadays, and how unreliable
is the best of them, I believe you would have seen how completely we are
at their mercy."

Then she told him all about her second waiting-woman, while Manuel said,
"Yes," and "I never heard the like," and "You were perfectly right, my
dear," and so on, and all the while appeared to be thinking about
something else in the back of his mind.

XXXVI

Excursions from Content

Thereafter Count Manuel could not long remain away from the window
through which Ruric had climbed with a lantern, and through which Ruric
had returned insanely blaspheming against law and order.

The outlook from this window was somewhat curious. Through the two other
windows of Ageus, set side by side with this one, and in appearance
similar to it in all respects, the view remained always unchanged, and
just such as it was from the third window so long as you looked through
the thick clear glass. But when the third window of Ageus was opened,
all the sunlit summer world that you had seen through the thick clear
glass was gone quite away, and you looked out into a limitless gray
twilight wherein not anything was certainly discernible, and the air
smelt of spring. It was a curious experience for Count Manuel, thus to
regard through the clear glass his prospering domains and all the
rewards of his famous endeavors, and then find them vanished as soon as
the third window was opened. It was