you thought as a wife of her, who has been a widow these ten years and has a son of twenty?"
"God above us alone knows what I have or have not thought, but it is certain that at present I think of her only as one who has been most kind to me, but who is more to be feared than my worst foe, if I have any."
"Hush!" she said, raising her finger. "I fancied I heard someone stir behind us."
"Fear nothing," I answered. "We are alone here, for I set guards of my own company around the place, with command to admit no one, and my order runs against all save the Empress in person."
"Then we are safe, Olaf, since this damp would disarrange her hair, which, I noted, is curled with irons, not by Nature, like my own. Oh! Olaf, Olaf, how wonderful is the fate that has brought us together. I say that when I saw you yonder in the cathedral for the first time since I was born, I knew you again, as you knew me. That is why, when you whispered to me, 'Greeting after the ages,' I gave you back your welcome. I know nothing of the past. If we lived and loved before, that tale is lost to me. But there's your dream and there's the necklace. When I was a child, Olaf, it was taken from the embalmed body of some royal woman, who, by tradition, was of my own race, yes, and by records of which my father can tell you, for he is among the last who can still read the writing of the old Egyptians. Moreover, she was very like me, Olaf, for I remember her well as she lay in her coffin, preserved by arts which the Egyptians had. She was young, not much older than I am to-day, and her story tells that she died in giving birth to a son, who grew up a strong and vigorous man,
