With a gracious inclination of her handsome head, she walked with her graceful, swimming gait to the entrance of the big saloon. Arrived at the doors she waited till Corsini was on the platform and listened attentively to his performance. There was great applause when he had finished, and she clapped her hands enthusiastically. The artist in her responded to the artist in him. It would not be true to say that she had not heard greater masters, but there was a subtle quality in his playing that revealed true genius. He always excelled in the appealing and sentimental passages. But while she was listening, to all appearances with the closest attention, her glance was ever roaming through the open doors, down the grand staircase. It was evident that she was looking for somebody, and restless and disappointed because of his non-arrival. And then, just as she was preparing to leave, a sudden light came into her beautiful eyes. The tall soldierly figure of Zouroff was ascending the stairs. Her smile was just a little cold, her tones reproachful. "I was just going; you promised to be here in time to hear me sing. Why are you so late?" The Prince drew her a little out of earshot. He spoke with his usual ease and assurance. He admired the beautiful singer more than any woman of his acquaintance, but he never spoiled any member of the gentler sex with too great a display of politeness or solicitude. "Is it so very difficult to guess? There are certain things that must always come first in a man's life." "Spare me that ancient platitude. You have indulged in it so often." Her voice was restrained and low, but there was a dangerous gleam in her eyes. Zouroff appealed in many ways to her passionate but rather hard nature, but there were times when his indifference, his brutal frankness, cut her to the quick. But the Prince was not a man to pay more than passing heed to the symptoms of a woman's gathering displeasure. By nature he was a savage. To a certain extent he was susceptible to female beauty and fascination, but deep down in his heart he had a profound contempt for women, for their uncontrolled feelings, their little tricks of sentiment, their abject subservience to their emotions. "Things go well," he said, in his hard, level tones. "I trust we shall not have to wait very long now. We held a very important meeting to-night; it was prolonged beyond the hour I expected. That is why I am late and could not get here in time to hear you sing." The beautiful singer seemed but half appeased by this rather curt apology. It confirmed what he had told her so often before, that overwhelming ambition, the advancement of his political schemes, were all powerful influences in his life; that a woman's devoted affection weighed but as a feather in the scale against these. "Let us talk of other things," she said, speaking in a tone of assumed lightness.