She threw dust in her own eyes, and called it a pleasant talk! She looked absurdly young for her twenty-six years, just a dainty slip of a patrician girl, as she sat there on her chintz sofa, with its fresh pattern of lilacs and tender green.

Everything was in harmony, even to her soft violet cloth dress trimmed with fur.
And again as the hour for the trysting chimed, her lover that was to be, entered the room.
"This is perfectly divine," he said, as he came in, while the roguish twinkle of a schoolboy, who has outwitted his mates sparkled in his fine eyes.

"All those good people tramping for miles in the cold and damp, while we two sensible ones are going to enjoy a nice fire and a friendly chat." Thus he disarmed her nervousness, and gave her time.
"May I sit by you, my Lady Ethelrida ?" he said; and as she smiled, he took his seat, but not too near her--nothing must be the least hurried or out of place.
So for about a quarter of an hour they talked of books--their favorites--hers, all so simple and chaste, his, of all kinds, so long as they showed style, and were masterpieces of taste and balance.

Then, as a great piece of wood fell in the open grate and made a volley of sparks, he leaned forward a little and asked her if he might tell her 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.