that for which he had come, the history of a man.

The daylight was drawing in, and they had an hour before them.

"Yes," said Ethelrida, "only let us make up the fire first, and only
turn on that one soft light," and she pointed to a big gray china owl
who carried a simple shade of white painted with lilacs on his back.
"Then we need not move again, because I want extremely to hear it--the
history of a man."

He obeyed her commands, and also drew the silk blinds.

"Now, indeed, we are happy; at least, I am," he said.

Lady Ethelrida leant back on her muslin embroidered cushion and prepared
herself to listen with a rapt face.

Francis Markrute stood by the fire for a while, and began from there:

"You must go right back with me to early days, Sweet Lady," he said, "to
a palace in a gloomy city and to an artiste--a ballet-dancer--but at the
same time a great _musicienne_ and a good and beautiful woman, a woman
with red, splendid hair, like my niece. There she lived in a palace in
this city, away from the world with her two children; an Emperor was her
lover and her children's father; and they all four were happy as the day
was long. The children were a boy and a girl, and presently they began
to grow up, and the boy began to think about life and to reason things
out with himself. He had, perhaps, inherited this faculty from his
grandfather, on his mother's side, who was a celebrated poet and
philosopher and a Spanish Jew. So his mother, the beautiful dancer, was