"I beg you," she said with an earnestness I could not understand, "I
beg you to come _this_ way," leading me to the right, for I had turned
instinctively to the left in entering the gallery, perhaps because my
room in Esmo's house had lain in that direction. Reaching the end of
the gallery, she turned into one of the inner apartments; and as the
door closed behind us, I felt that she was sinking to the ground, as
if the agitation she had manifested in the hall, controlled till her
object was accomplished, had now overpowered her. I caught and carried
her to the usual pile of cushions in the corner. The room, according
to universal custom in Martial houses after sunset, was brilliantly
lighted by the electric lamp in the peristyle, and throwing back her
veil, I saw that she was pale to ghastliness and almost fainting. In
my ignorance of my own house, I could call for no help, and employ no
other restoratives than fond words and caresses. Under this treatment,
nevertheless, she recovered perhaps as quickly as under any which the
faculty might have prescribed. She was, still, however, much more
distressed than mere consciousness of the grave solecism she had
committed could explain. But I had no other clue to her trouble, and
could only hope that in repudiating this she would explain its real
cause.

"Come, bambina!" I expostulated, "we understand one another too well
by this time for you to wrong me by all this alarm. I know that you
would not have broken through the customs of your people without good
reason; and you know that, even if your reason were not sufficient, I
should not be hard upon the error."

"I am sure you would not," she said. "But this time you have to
consider others, and you cannot let it be supposed that you do not
know a wife's duty, or will allow your authority to be set at naught
in your own household."

"What matter? Do you suppose I listen in the roads?" [care for
gossip], I rejoined. "Household rule is a matter of the veil, and no
one--not even your autocratic Prince--will venture to lift it."

"You have not lifted it yourself yet," she answered. "You will
understand me, when you have looked at the slips you were about to
make them read aloud, had I not interrupted you."

"Bead them yourself," I said, handing to her the papers I still held,
and which, after her interposition, I had not attempted to decipher.
She took them, but with a visible shudder of reluctance--not stronger
than came