How can this woman live here so lonely, so far from everything human? And yet, why not? She is a whole world, a hell, to herself. Within the resounding walls of the populous harem she felt herself lonely, and she peoples this vast vault with the creations of her own wild fancy. Here she shapes the future, forms endless plans, dreams of battles, of intoxicating love, of more than earthly might, of new realms of which she is the Queen, the Sun surrounded by her starry train. Suddenly a light trampling is heard overhead, as if some one were riding over the vaulted roof. Azrael arises and listens. The sound of footsteps is audible in the corridors, and presently three familiar, measured knocks are heard at the doors. "'Tis he!" she whispers; springs from her couch, hastens to the door, draws back the heavy bolts, tears the door violently open, and falls into the arms of him who enters. "At last! at last!" she murmurs, twining her arms round the man's neck and pressing her cheeks to his lips. The man is Denis Banfi. Sad, speechless, broken as he never was before, he does not even greet the girl as he enters. He seems to freeze, all his limbs are trembling. He has left his tiger-skin outside, but the drenching rain has soaked him through and through. "Thou art wet to the skin," says the girl. "Quick! warm thyself. Thou hast come from afar. Thou dost need repose," and dragging Banfi to her couch, she took off his dolman, covered him with her own costly ermine mantle, placed under his feet soft velvet cushions, which she first warmed over the steaming censer, and pressing the man's frozen hands to her throbbing bosom, warmed them there. Yet Banfi remained dumb. Misfortune seemed to be written on his forehead. A far less practised eye, a far less penetrating genius than Azrael's, could have seen at a glance that he was no longer the haughty magnate he had been, but a fallen viceroy, whose fall was all the greater because he had stood so high; who had come to her, not because he had forsaken every one, but because every one had forsaken him; whom not pleasure but despair had brought to this place. "I have been waiting for thee!" cried the girl, burying her head in Banfi's bosom, while he played involuntarily with her rich tresses. "To me thy absence is an eternity, thy presence but a fleeting moment." Not for all the world would Azrael have let Banfi perceive that she had observed the change in him. She pushed a little round stool in front of the couch, took up her mandolin, and began to sing with a voice of thrilling sweetness one of those improvisations which the ardent imagination of the East brings spontaneously to the lips, striking the while with her fingers wild, fantastic chords. "If thou hast joy, share it with thy beloved, and thou wilt have so much the more. If thou hast grief, share it with thy beloved, and thou wilt have so much the less." Banfi looked at the odalisk with beetling brows.