Iría recovered herself almost immediately and brought her gold-and-topaz eyes back to those of the Emperor. "I would like to go, if I may, sire," she said. "Are you offended with me, _cousine_?" "Certainly not, sire." He watched her fold the gleaming embroidery, tapping his fingers restlessly on the arm of his chair. "You would go, and Allard," he mused aloud, "each after a duty, a love, an aim. I wonder if there was ever but one who centered all such thoughts in me, who made me the axis of his world?" "You think of Baron Dalmorov, sire?" she ventured. He gave her the desired permission by rising. "You are anxious to go, _cousine_; pardon. Why, yes, Dalmorov; who else? Allard," he turned to summon the others, "Allard will have the honor of accompanying you to the carriage." "No," protested Iría, but too late. "No? You do not wish Allard's escort?" he demanded. "Oh, yes, I--of course." She turned hurriedly from him, then looked back with a gesture of helpless bewilderment and distress. "I wish you had not spoken, sire; I wish you had not spoken." And as the others came up, she passed her hand through Marya's arm and left Allard and Alexia to follow. All that day Stanief was immersed in councils and affairs. Not until evening did he and Iría meet, when she stopped in his study on her way to the opera, where no less a cavalier than the Emperor was to take her husband's place with her. Standing straight and slim before him, her head drooping under its weight of silken floss and spanning jewels, her soft throat and dimpled shoulders crossed and recrossed by the manifold strands of the wonderful Stanief pink pearls, she repeated the conversation of the morning. Repeated it, all except the last part. Her eyes downcast, her gloved fingers twisted nervously together, the rosy gems gleaming uneasily with her rapid breathing, it was the Iría of long ago he saw the timid, shrinking girl whom Allard had brought from Spain. Sensitive as a woman to the change, Stanief gazed and listened, finding no explanation in the story she related. "That is all?" he asked gently, when she ended. "Yes," she said faintly. "All that matters, monseigneur." "You," he hesitated a moment for the right words. "You are not troubled, or displeased, Iría?" She retreated a step, bending to gather round her the trailing satin and lace folds. "No," she answered. "No, monseigneur. Good night." Without his will, without his act, the delicate confidence between them was shattered. The frail, exquisite understanding that was too slight for friendship, too pale for love, had been destroyed. Afterward, in the days which followed, Stanief came to look back on that month as the time when two existences crumbled under his touch. When she had gone, he sat still for many moments. "Adrian or Dalmorov," he decided. "I wonder--" He touched the bell, the old dangerous drowsiness settling over his expression.