Nay, talk not of duty; you have no guards to set or change to-night.

Follow me; I have secret business of which I would talk with you." So she went and I followed through doors that opened mysteriously at our approach and shut mysteriously behind us, till I found myself in a little room half-lighted only, that I had never seen before.

It was a scented and a beautiful place, in one corner of which a white statue gleamed, that of a Venus kissing Cupid, who folded one wing about her head, and through the open window-place the moonlight shone and floated the murmur of the sea.
The double doors were shut, for aught I knew locked, and with her own hands Irene drew the curtains over them.

Near the open window, to which there was no balcony, stood a couch.
"Sit yonder, Olaf," she said, "for here there is no ceremony; here we are but man and woman." I obeyed, while she busied herself with the curtains.

Then she came and sat herself down on the couch also, leaning against the end of it in such a fashion that she could watch me in the moonlight.
"Olaf," she said, after she had looked at me a while, rather strangely, as I thought, for the colour came and went upon her face, which in that light seemed quite young again and wonderfully beautiful, "Olaf, you are a very brave man." "There are hundreds in your service braver, Empress; cowards do not take to soldiering." "I could tell you a different story, Olaf; but it was not of this kind of courage that I talked.