judgment? If so, which of us tips the beam?"

"Iduna was more beautiful than ever you can have been, Augusta," I
replied quietly.

She stared at me till her eyes grew quite round, then puckered up
her mouth as though to say something furious, and finally burst out
laughing.

"By every saint in Byzantium," she said, "or, rather, by their relics,
for of live ones there are none, you are the strangest man whom I have
known. Are you weary of life that you dare to say such a thing to me,
the Empress Irene?"

"Am I weary of life? Well, Augusta, on the whole I think I am. It seems
to me that death and after it may interest us more. For the rest, you
asked me a question, and, after the fashion of my people, I answered it
as truthfully as I could."

"By my head, you have said it again," she exclaimed. "Have you not
heard, most innocent Northman, that there are truths which should not be
mentioned and much less repeated?"

"I have heard many things in Byzantium, Augusta, but I pay no attention
to any of them--or, indeed, to little except my duty."

"Now that this, this--what's the girl's name?"

"Iduna the Fair," I said.