Angelescu shrugged his shoulders and moved away. He knew better than to prolong a useless discussion, and he knew equally well from experience what the Prince might consider as legitimately included in his "kindergarten of flirtation." Judging from his own impression of Ragna and of the capabilities of her temperament once aroused, he realized the danger to her peace of mind which would inevitably follow the merest spark of sense awakening. "There would be the devil to pay," he thought and as before reflected that fortunately the time was short. CHAPTER IV Ragna, tired out by the long day of new experience, soon fell asleep in her narrow berth. It seemed to her that after a long sleep of which she was dimly conscious she awoke to find herself in a strange country, a wide grass-covered plain running to the foot of low mountains, a rolling plain extending right and left as far as the eye could reach. The sky was heavy with thunder clouds, and against the dark heavens and the grassy knolls and bottoms ran a series of arches--white arches, some broken, some still whole and joined one to the other like an interminable bridge. She was no longer a girl but a hare, running bounding along, and after her ran a greyhound the fleetest of his kind, following her in long easy leaps. It seemed to her that though she was the hare, yet it was as if she stood at a distance and watched the chase, saw the anguished turning and doubling of the hare, saw the greyhound ever nearer and nearer, about to overtake his prey. At last the storm broke, and amid the wild lightnings and the crashing thunder, the end came--one last despairing bound, and Ragna, the hare, felt the pursuer's teeth close in her panting side. With a shriek she sat up in her berth. Above, the sailors were holy-stoning the deck, and the cabin was as she had seen it the night before, her clothes swaying to the motion from the hooks on the wall where she had hung them. Now and again a green wave washed over the closed port-hole. She flung herself back on her pillow. Drops of perspiration beaded her forehead, and in spite of her wish to laugh at the relief of finding her dream only a dream after all, she was still dominated by the mysterious anguish with which the dream had filled her. Thinking it over, she shuddered and had need to feel the stuff curtain of her berth to assure herself that she was really awake. She looked at her watch; it was not yet six o'clock, but accustomed to the early rising at the Convent, she felt it impossible to fall asleep again, so she rose and performed her toilette, amused by the difficulty of dressing on a floor which swung up and down under her feet sending her staggering to and fro like a drunken man.