"My young friend," said Phadrig, with a slow shake of his head, "you are grievously mistaken. You have eternal life already. You may kill your body, or it may die of age or disease, but the life of your soul is not yours to take or keep. Only the High Gods can dispose of that. Who am I that I should abet you in defying their decrees? Here is my refusal of your mad request." He plucked the rose which Caine had touched, held it to his lips and breathed on it. The next instant the withered leaves fell to the ground, and lay there dry and shrivelled. The stalk was brown and dry. As he released Caine's wrist he dropped the stalk in the middle of the bush, and said in a loud tone: "As thou hast lived, die--as all things must which shall live again." As quickly as the rose-bush had grown and flowered so quickly, it withered and died. In a few moments there was nothing left of it but a few dry sticks lying in a little heap of dust. The circle suddenly widened out as the people shrank back, every face showing, not only wonder now, but actual fear; and now Franklin Marmion felt that Phadrig had been allowed to go as far as a due consideration for the sanity of his guests would permit. The other two Professors were disputing in low, anxious tones, as if even their scepticism was shaken at last: Martin Caine had drifted away through the opening press to hide his terror and chagrin. The Adept stood impassively triumphant beside the poor relics of the rose-bush, but obviously enjoying the consternation that he had produced--for now the lust of power which ever attends upon imperfect knowledge had taken hold of him, and he was devising yet another marvel for their bewilderment. But before he had arrived at his decision, something else happened which was quite outside his programme. The Prince broke the chilly silence by saying to Nitocris in a tone loud enough for every one to hear: "I hope, Miss Marmion, that I have justified my intrusion by the skill which my friend Phadrig has displayed for the entertainment of your guests?" She turned and looked at him, and, as their glances met, he saw a change come over her. Her eyes grew darker: her features acquired an almost stony rigidity utterly strange to her. His eyelids lifted quickly, and he shrank back from her as a man might do who had seen the wraith of one long dead, but once well known. "Nitocris!" he murmured in Russian. "Phadrig was right: it is the Queen!" She swept past him--Oscar Oscarovitch, the man who aspired to the throne of the Eastern Empire of Europe--as though he had been one of his own slaves in the old days, and faced Phadrig.