"Love makes you clever, Olaf. But hearken. I do not believe that the Empress thinks me black and ugly any longer. As it chanced while I walked in the inner garden this afternoon, where you said I might go when I wished to be quite alone, dreaming of our love and you, I looked up and saw an imperial woman of middle age, who was gorgeous as a peacock, watching me from a little distance. I went on my way, pretending to see no one, and heard the lady say: "'Has all this trouble driven me mad, Martina, or did I behold a woman beautiful as one of the nymphs of my people's fables wandering yonder among those bushes?'
"I repeat her very words, Olaf, not because they are true--for, remember, she saw me at a distance and against a background of rocks and autumn flowers--but because they were her words, which I think you ought to hear, with those that followed them."
"Irene has said many false things in her life," I said, smiling, "but by all the Saints these were not among them."
Then we embraced again, and after that was finished Heliodore, her head resting on my shoulder, continued her story: "'What was she like, Mistress?' asked the lady Martina, for by this time I had passed behind some little trees. 'I have seen no one who is beautiful in this garden except yourself.'
"'She was clad in a clinging white robe, Martina, that left her arms and bosom bare'--being alone, Olaf, I wore my Egyptian dress beneath my cloak, which I had laid down because of the heat of the sun. 'She was not so very tall, yet rounded and most graceful. Her eyes seemed large and dark, Martina, like her hair; her face was tinted like a rich-hued rose. Oh! were I a man she seemed such a one as I should love, who, like all my people, have ever worshipped beauty. Yet, what did I say, that she put me in mind of a nymph of Greece. Nay, that was not so. It was of a goddess of Old Egypt that she put me in mind, for on her face was the dreaming smile which I have seen on that of a statue of mother Isis whom the Egyptians worshipped. Moreover, she wore just such a headdress as I have noted upon those statues.'
"Now the lady Martina answered: 'Surely, you must have dreamed, Mistress. The only Egyptian woman in the palace is the daughter of the old Coptic noble, Magas, who is in Olaf's charge, and though I am told that she is not so ugly as I heard at first, Olaf has never said to me that she was like a goddess. What you saw was doubtless some image of Fortune conjured up by your mind. This I take to be the best of omens, who in these doubtful days grow superstitious.'