How young you are, child, and how foolish! To question the cords for you in the moonlight now is to expect to gather grapes from thorns.

Take my word for that!" Here she interrupted the words uttered with so much difficulty, and with her blackish-blue cotton dress wiped her perspiring face, strangely flushed by the exertion and the firelight.
Ledscha had listened with increasing disappointment.
The wise old dame was doubtless right, yet before she ventured to the sculptor's workshop the next day she must know at every cost how matters stood, what she had to fear or to hope from him; so after a brief silence she ventured to ask the question, "But are there only the stars and the cords which predict what fate holds in store for one who is so nearly allied to you ?" "No, child, no," was the reply.

"But nothing can be clone about looking into the future now.

It requires rigid fasting from early dawn, and I ate the dates you brought me.

I inhaled the odor of the roasting ducks, too, and then--it must be done at midnight; and at midnight your people will be anxious if you are not at home by that time, or perhaps send a slave to seek you here at my house, and that--that must not be done--I must prevent it." "So you are expecting some one," Ledscha eagerly replied.