Time went on slowly. Korynthia opened the windows looking on to the park. A concert of nightingales came from the bushes. A butterfly--the night peacock's eye--flew in at the open window; taking her for a flower, it flew about her, not about the portrait. Then flew in another night moth, differing from others in that it emits a sound--an unpleasant, shrill, yet melancholy hum. Its name is _Sphinx Atropos_. Why has it been called by the name of that one of the Parcæ which severs the thread of life? Because its back and head are the exact counterpart of a death's-head. Ss--h! The lady brushes away the weird moth; but it had found a refuge; it had flown across to the picture and had settled in a corner of the frame. At length the twilight deepens. A few impatient employés let off the first rockets from the pleasure gardens in the islands. Bengal lights are beginning to show on Kreskowsky Island. Ah, of course! It is Zeneida's birthday. The court calendar has found a place for her among the saints; there are great doings to-night in her palace. And something more, perhaps--a sitting of the Szojusz Blagadenztoiga. Under every possible guise and excuse, it holds its meetings at the singer's house. When Prince Ghedimin left home that evening he had told his wife that he was commanded to the Czar, and would be away all night discussing important matters of state. It is therefore certain that he will be spending the night at Zeneida's, and Korynthia need not fear to be disturbed; it is a case of tit for tat. Any moment may now bring him--the one so impatiently expected. For as soon as the fireworks on the islands begin they attract all the servants and watchmen yet awake. There is no one to keep guard on the winding paths of the park. The great clock strikes eleven; every quarter of an hour four bells ring a carillon. At the last stroke of the clock she seems to hear the sound of approaching footsteps on the gravel. Who else can it be? An aristocrat's step is so different from that of a mujik. She is right. The new-comer, stopping at the door of the garden veranda, opens it with a key. His footsteps now announce his coming, as they hurriedly ascend the spiral staircase. Korynthia has studied the pose in which she will be surprised. Leaning over the window-sill, her face resting on her hand--a dreamy figure so absorbed in the song of the nightingales that she does not perceive some one approach her, bend over her, and breathe a soft kiss upon her lovely shoulder. The Princess seems to rouse from her reverie with a start, as, with an air of smiling reproach, she turns to the stealer of the kiss, "Ah, how late you are!" But as she sees him, she starts in reality. The kiss has been no theft. The perpetrator had but taken what was his own. It was her husband, Prince Ghedimin. Korynthia stammered out, "How early you have come home!" "You just said how late I was." "I was dreaming. I did not know what I was saying. How did you get in?"