“My life in her hands!” he repeated musingly. “Yes, it has come to that! My life!” A great sigh broke from him. “My life--my art--my work--my name! In all these things I have taken pride, and she--she can trample them under her feet and make of me nothing more than man clamoring for woman’s love! What a wild world it is! What a strange Force must that be which created it!--the Force that some men call God and others Devil! A strange, blind, brute Force!--for it makes us aspire only to fall; it gives a man dreams of ambition and splendid attainment only to fling him like a mad fool on a woman’s breast, and bid him find there, and there only, the bewildering sweetness which makes everything else in existence poor and tame in comparison. Well, well--my life! What is it? A mere grain of sand dropped in the sea; let her do with it as she will. God! How I felt her power upon me last night,--last night when her lithe figure swaying in the dance reminded me …” He paused, startled at the turn his own thoughts were taking. “Of what? Let me try and express to myself now what I could not express or realize last night. She--Ziska--I thought was mine,--mine from her dimpled feet to her dusky hair,--and she danced for me alone. It seemed that the jewels she wore upon her rounded arms and slender ankles were all love-gifts from me--every circlet of gold, every starry, shining gem on her fair body was the symbol of some secret joy between us--joy so keen as to be almost pain. And as she danced, I thought I was in a vast hall of a majestic palace, where open colonnades revealed wide glimpses of a burning desert and deep blue sky. I heard the distant sound of rolling drums, and not far off I saw the Sphinx--a creature not old but new--resting upon a giant pedestal and guarding the sculptured gate of some great temple which contained, as I then thought, all the treasures of the world. I could paint the picture as I saw it then! It was a fleeting impression merely, conjured up by the dance that dizzied my brain. And that song of the Lotus-lily! That was strange--very strange, for I thought I had heard it often before,--and I saw myself in the vague dream, a prince, a warrior, almost a king, and far more famous in the world than I am now!” He looked about him uneasily, with a kind of nervous terror, and his eyes rested for a moment on the easel where the picture he had painted of the Princess was placed, covered from view by a fold of dark cloth.