This was a woman, beautiful indubitably, but no longer young. Her bared shoulders were thick and mature, the breast under them mature, too. On her bent face lust and hatred and cupidity and all evil passions had graven marks that not even death could erase.
Ay! something strange here. Young Zuan's foot struck against a yielding body which lay under the heavy shadow of the table. It was another woman, and dead also, lying upon her face. Gradenigo turned the body over with panic in his heart. A squat, broad-jowled, peasant face—the serving-maid, it would seem, who had done her mistress that last service and straightway followed to serve elsewhere.
Zuan rose to his feet frowning. The matter was quite beyond him. Then one stirred in the shadows at the far end of the room, and very slowly his princess came to him through those bars of colored light.
"Child! Child!" he cried again, and tears rolled down over his cheeks. He put out shaking arms to her, but she held him away with one hand, saying only:
"Wait, lord!"
Young Zuan swung about towards the dead woman who drooped so heavily in her bonds.
"Who is—that who sits there dead?" he asked. "Corner told me it was the Princess Yaga. Some one has lied to him. Who is it?"
She gave a quick sob.
"Lord, it is the Princess Yaga," she said.