Could he stand much more of this? His handsome features looked suddenly wooden beneath their extreme pallor, but she was no longer looking at him. For the fraction of a second he hesitated. Could he venture to take her in his arms, just this once, like a child one has known and cherished all one’s life? A shiver ran all over him. The pause had been too short to attract her notice, but it had served its turn. Summoning to his aid his last remnants of self-respect, he held out both his hands, in which she put her own. “_Au revoir_, and God keep you in His care!” he said, very low; then, hastily, almost brusquely, he pressed his lips into the rosy hollow of each little palm and dropped them. “God bless you and keep you,” she whispered, and, turning quickly on her pointed heels, she preceded him up-stairs to the dusty regions where “Antinoüs” was so usefully occupied. CHAPTER X There be twin crowns, whose kingly dower Forbids to fail or swerve, Borne by twin angels, Love and Power, And writ thereon, “I serve.” “Ah, yes, Princess, I pity you with all my heart! Imagine hiding your charm, your beauty, in a prison like Tverna--excuse me, Basil-Vassilièvitch--but you know that Tverna, magnificent though it be, _is_ a prison nine months out of the year ... a grand prison, I admit, but still a jail--a place to distract one with its loneliness.” Countess Chouróff, sitting bolt upright in her chair of state, was heading her hospitable table in a dazzling haze of jewels that outlined her meager person at every edge. “She reminds me of a wire sign illuminated by electricity,” thought Basil, who sat on her right hand. “You are very severe, Vassilissa-Andrièvna, very severe indeed, to my birthplace!” he said, smiling. “Severe! Hear this miscreant talk!” she appealed to the company, nodding a tiaraed coiffure until the gigantic diamonds and emeralds spiking it in every direction flashed again. “But men are like that ... they do not understand our tenderer natures. My poor husband was identically the same--God rest his soul!” She crossed herself scrupulously with a bony yellow hand loaded with enormous gems. “Duty was his eternal rallying-cry--bless him! It was our duty to vegetate in the wilds at his side until it became imperative for our daughters to be presented, and then the grumbles, the lamentations that ensued! Dear! Dear! One would have sworn he was on his way to be crucified. I assure you, Princess, that if you yield at the beginning to marital tyranny you will never again be able to call your soul your own.”