"And then?" I asked.
"The Empress answered: 'Well spoken! Such would have been my own words had I been in your place. Moreover, they are true, and the robe becomes you well. Yet presume not too far, girl, seeing that Byzantium is no longer a village, and Egypt has some fanatic Moslem for a Pharaoh, who thinks little of your ancient blood.'
"So I bowed and went, and as I walked away heard the Empress rating the lady Martina about I know not what, save that your name came into the matter, and my own. Why does this Empress talk so much about you, Olaf, seeing that she has many officers who are higher in her service, and why was she so moved about this matter of the necklace of golden shells?"
"Heliodore," I answered, "I must tell now what I have hidden from you. The Augusta has been pleased--why, I cannot say, but chiefly, I suppose, because of late years it has been my fancy to keep myself apart from women, which is rare in this land--to show me certain favour. I gather, even, that, whether she means it or means it not, she has thought of me as a husband."
"Oh!" interrupted Heliodore, starting away from me, "now I understand everything. And, pray, have 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, and although he was but half royal, founded a new dynasty in Egypt and became my forefather. This necklace lay upon her breast, and beneath it a writing on papyrus, which said that when the half of it which was lost should be joined again to that half, then those who had worn them would meet once more as mortals. Now the two halves of the necklace have met, and we have met as God decreed, and it is one and we are one for ever and for ever, let every Empress of the earth do what they will to part us."