It is all folly and yet--and yet! the Regent's game is over, and he has lost it.

The creature is stretching itself--its head drops--it draws itself up--one more clutch at my dress--now it is dead!" She contemplated the dead hawk in her lap for some minutes, then she took it up, flung it into a corner of the tent, and exclaimed: "Good-bye, King Ani.

The crown is not for you!" Then she went on: "What project has he in hand now, I wonder?
Twenty times he has asked me whether the great enterprise will succeed; as if I knew any more than he! And Nemu too has hinted all kinds of things, though he would not speak out.

Something is going on, and I--and I?
There it comes again." The old woman pressed her hand to her heart and closed her eyes, her features were distorted with pain; she did not perceive Scherau's return, she did not hear him call her name, or see that, when she did not answer him, he left her again.

For an hour or more she remained unconscious, then her senses returned, but she felt as if some ice-cold fluid slowly ran through her veins instead of the warm blood.
"If I had kept a hawk for myself too," she muttered, "it would soon follow the other one in the corner! If only Ani keeps his word, and has me embalmed! "But how can he when he too is so near his end.