"Darling," said Paul, "and I for yours, my fierce, adorable Queen. But why should we speak of terrible things? Are we not happy today, and now, and have you not told me to live while we may?" "Come!" she said, and they walked on down to the gondola again, and floated away out to the lagoon. But when they were there, far away from the world, she talked in a new strain of earnestness to Paul. He must promise to do something with his life--something useful and great in future years. "You must not just drift, my Paul, like so many of your countrymen do. You must help to stem the tide of your nation's decadence, and be a strong man. For me, when I read now of England, it seems as if all the hereditary legislators--it is what you call your nobles, eh?--these men have for their motto, like Louis XV., _Après moi le déluge_--It will last my time. Paul, wherever I am, it will give me joy for you to be strong and great, sweetheart. I shall know then I have not loved just a beautiful shell, whose mind I was able to light for a time. That is a sadness, Paul, perhaps the greatest of all, to see a soul one has illuminated and awakened to the highest point gradually slipping back to a browsing sheep, to live for _la chasse_ alone, and horses, and dogs, with each day no higher aim than its own mean pleasure. Ah, Paul!" she continued with sudden passion, "I would rather you were dead--dead and cold with me, than I should have to feel you were growing a _rien du tout_--a thing who will go down into nothingness, and be forgotten by men!" Her face was aflame with the _feu sacré_. The noble brow and line of her throat will ever remain in Paul's memory as a thing apart in womankind. Who could have small or unworthy thoughts who had known her--this splendid lady? And his worship grew and grew. CHAPTER XVII That night, as they looked from the loggia on the Grand Canal after dinner, the moonlight making things almost light as day, Dmitry begged admittance from the doorway of the great salon. The lady turned imperiously, and flashed upon him. How dared he interrupt their happy hour with things of earth? Then she saw he was loth to speak before Paul, and that his face was grey with fear. Paul realised the situation, and moved aside, pretending to lean from the wide windows and watch the passing gondolas, his wandering attention, however, fixing itself upon one which was moored not far from the palazzo, and occupied by a solitary figure reclining motionless in the seats. It had no coloured lights, this gondola, or merry musicians; it was just a black object of silence, tenanted by one man. Dmitry whispered, and the lady listened, a quiver of rage going through her lithe body. Then she turned and surveyed the moored gondola, the same storm of passion and hate in her eyes as once before had come there, at the Rigi Kaltbad Belvedere.