He looked up and saw her eyes glistening and narrowing at the
corners, like the eyes of an angry snake.

"If I have such a feeling," she replied slowly, "it is probably a
question of heritage."

"Ah! Your parents were perhaps barbaric in their notions of love
and hatred?" he queried, lazily working at his charcoal sketch
with growing admiration for its result.

"My parents came of a race of kings!" she answered. "All my
ancestors were proud, and of a temper unknown to this petty day.
They resented a wrong, they punished falsehood and treachery, and
they took a life for a life. YOUR generation tolerates every sin
known in the calendar with a smile and a shrug,--you have arrived
at the end of your civilization, even to the denial of Deity and a
future life."

"That is not the end of our civilization, Princess," said Gervase,
working away intently, with eyes fixed on the canvas as he talked.
"That is the triumphal apex, the glory, the culmination of
everything that is great and supreme in manhood. In France, man
now knows himself to be the only God; England--good, slow-pacing
England--is approaching France in intelligence by degrees, and I
rejoice to see that it is possible for a newspaper like the
Agnostic to exist in London. Only the other day that excellent
journal was discussing the possibility of teaching monkeys to
read, and a witty writer, who adopts the nom de plume of
'Saladin,' very cleverly remarked 'that supposing monkeys were