"Maritza!"
"Yes, speak my name and say that you loved me, too. If I understand him he will love you for that. I am very weary and have much to do to-morrow. Send Hannah to me and let me sleep."
In silence the two women kissed each other, and then Frina returned to her room while Maritza threw herself on a couch, Hannah watching beside her. Dumitru stood sentinel outside her door.
For Frina there was no sleep, only a restless pacing to and fro, and a longing for to-morrow—the end, surely the end would come to-morrow.
The dim light in her room grew dimmer, paling before the coming day. A bird in the garden whistled a long note, and after a silence it was answered from another part of the garden, and then quickly from another. A star gleamed low in the ever-lightening purple of the east, the herald of the dawn, and from her window Frina watched it, wondering. There was mystery in the breaking of a new day; would her eyes behold its setting? What thoughts would be in her brain as the golden light faded once more into the black pall of night?
She turned from the window sharply as she heard quick footsteps in the corridor.
Long hours had she waited for them, and now they had come. Her heart seemed to throb violently to a sudden standstill, and having taken one hurried step toward the door, she paused as it opened, and Desmond Ellerey stood before her.
Looking forward to this meeting it had seemed to Frina Mavrodin that in it her life must reach a crisis; but the reality fitted none of her preconceived notions of what this meeting would be like. Ellerey's dress was travel-stained; there was a rent in his sleeve, and he looked as though he had come through some struggle. She noted all this, but it was the expression on his face which fixed her attention. It was stern, unyielding, desperate; and her frame stiffened, and a flash came into her eyes as though she were angry at his intrusion.
"The Princess, Countess?" said Ellerey.
"Is sleeping," she answered.