It was approached by groves of ilex, from a wall at the edge of the sea. And now Paul could discern the landing-stage, and the great studded door. A sensation of foreboding--a wild, mad anxiety, filled his being. What had happened? Why might he not land? Then for the first time that fact of Vasili's vanishment came into his mind. Was there something sinister in it? Had he scented any danger to his Queen, and gone to see? A whirlwind of questions and frenzied speculation shook Paul's brain. But there was nothing to be done now but to cram on all steam and make for Constantinople. He looked again. The green _jalousies_ were lowered over the windows, all seemed peaceful, silent and deserted. No living being wandered in the gardens. It might have been a mausoleum for the dead. And as this thought came to him Paul almost cried aloud. Then he dominated himself. How weak and intolerably foolish to imagine evil where perhaps none was! Why should his thoughts fly to terrible reasons for the postponement of his joy, when in truth they could as well be of the simplest? A sudden call to the city--a descent of some undesirable spying eye--a hundred and one possible things, all much more likely than any ones of fear. He would not permit another moment of wonder. He would regain his calm and wait like a man for certainty. Thus his face wore an iron mask and his thoughts an iron band. And presently they came to Constantinople. But of what followed afterwards it is difficult to write. For fate struck Paul on that warm June morning, and blasted his life, so that for many days he only saw red, and lived in hell. Every one knows the story which at the time convulsed Europe. How a certain evil-living King, after a wild orgie of mad drunkenness, rode out with two boon companions to the villa of his Queen, and there, forcing an entrance, ran a dagger through her heart before her faithful servants could protect her. And most people were glad, too, that this brute paid the penalty of his crime by his own death--his worthless life choked out of him by the Queen's devoted Kalmuck groom. But only Paul and his father, and Mark Grigsby, know the details, which were told in Dmitry's heart-broken letter. How that night, the 29th of May, at the hour the Excellency was expected, he--Dmitry--was waiting in the garden to meet him and conduct him through the gloom, when, while he stood there under the stars, the Imperial Highness had called him softly, telling him to take the message down to the Excellency, which he did. How he had never dreamed that immediate danger threatened her, or that the King was there, or he would not have left her for any peril to the Excellency, who was after all a man and could fight. And How Vasili, being younger and more quick of wit, had suspected, hearing his message as he gave it to the Excellency, that all was not well, and had hastened to the house--too late to save his Queen.