Nitocris kept her room until nearly seven the following evening. Oscarovitch made frequent enquiries of Jenny as to her condition, and always received the same reply. Her mistress was in a semi-unconscious state, and she could only rouse her every now and then to take a little nourishment. Unfortunately there was no doctor on board. He had had news in Copenhagen that his mother was lying very ill at Hamburg, and, as the cruise was then intended to be only a very short one, he had been given leave to go to her. The Prince wished to go back to Copenhagen, but this Nitocris absolutely refused. She had determined to fight her sorrow alone, and when she had conquered it, she would go back to England and her friends--which was exactly what Oscarovitch had determined she should not do. She was absolutely at his mercy now. He would be something worse than a fool to let such a golden opportunity go by--and so the _Grashna's_ bowsprit was kept pointing eastward, and the leagues between her and Oscarburg were being flung behind her as fast as the whirling screws could devour them. The only question that he had to ask himself was: How? and to that an easy answer at once suggested itself: The Horus Stone. When he went down to what he expected would be a lonely dinner, he was more than agreeably surprised to find Nitocris dressed in a black evening costume, which was the nearest approach to mourning that her available wardrobe made possible, already in the saloon. He bowed to her with a gesture of reverence, which meant far more than mere formal politeness, and said in a low tone: "Miss Marmion, I need not say how pleased I am to find that you are able to leave your room. May I hope that you will be able to dine?" "Yes, Prince," she replied, in the same cold, mechanical voice in which she had answered the tidings of her father's death. "The worst is over now, I hope. Some time and some way we must all leave the world and, at least, there is the consolation that my father has left it perhaps a little better and a little wiser than he found it. That, I think is as much as the ordinary mortal may be permitted to hope for. We who hold the Doctrine do not sorrow for the dead: we only sorrow for ourselves who are left to wait until we may, perhaps, meet again." "The Doctrine, Miss Marmion?" he asked, as he placed a chair for her at his right hand. "May I ask what the Doctrine is?" "Of re-incarnation," she replied, sitting down and looking at him across the corner of the table. "Really? I most sincerely wish that I could believe in it. Mr Amena, whom I took the great liberty of bringing to your garden-party, a man of very remarkable powers, as you saw, holds the Doctrine, as you call it, and he has been trying for months to convert me to it; but, as I said going to Elsinore, I'm afraid I am too hopelessly materialistic for any conversion to be possible in my case, at least as far as my present experiences have gone."