He smiled, and taking the box from her hands, touched a little spring. Almost at once the lid flew open. “I am afraid,” he said, “that it is empty.” She peered in. “No,” she exclaimed, “there is something there! See!” She thrust in her hand and drew out a small, curiously shaped dagger of fine blue steel and a roll of silken cord. She held them up to him. “What are these?” she asked. “Are they symbols--the cord and the knife of destiny?” He took them gently from her hand and replaced them in the box. She heard the lock go with a little click, and looked into his face, surprised at his silence. “Is there anything the matter?” she asked. “Ought I not to have taken them up?” Almost as the words left her lips, she understood. His face was inscrutable, but his very silence was ominous. She remembered a drawing in one of the halfpenny papers, the drawing of a dagger found in a horrible place. She remembered the description of that thin silken cord, and she began to tremble. “I did not know that anything was in the box,” he said calmly. “I am sorry if its contents have alarmed you.” She scarcely heard his words. The room seemed wheeling round with her, the floor unsteady beneath her feet. The atmosphere of the place had suddenly become horrible,--the faint odor of burning leaves, the pictures, almost like caricatures, which mocked her from the walls, the grinning idols, the strangely shaped weapons in their cases of black oak. She faltered as she crossed the room, but recovered herself. “Aunt,” she said, “if you are ready, I think that we ought to go.” The Duchess was more than ready. She rose promptly. The Prince walked with them to the door and handed them over to his majordomo. “It has been so nice of you,” he said to the Duchess, “to honor my bachelor abode. I shall often think of your visit.” “My dear Prince,” the Duchess declared, “it has been most interesting. Really, I found it hard to believe, in that charming room of yours, that we had not actually been transported to your wonderful country.” “You are very gracious,” the Prince answered, bowing low. Penelope’s hands were within her muff. She was talking some nonsense--she scarcely knew what, but her eyes rested everywhere save on the face of her host. Somehow or other she reached the door, ran down the steps and threw herself into a corner of the brougham. Then, for the first time, she allowed herself to look behind. The door was already closed, but between the curtains which his hands had drawn apart, Prince Maiyo was standing in the room which they had just quitted, and there was something in the calm impassivity of his white, stern face which seemed to madden her. She clenched her hands and looked away.