discern in her now anything but a deep feeling for the spirit of the poem which she had undertaken to interpret.
Her eyes were aglow with inspiration, and a slight tremor of rapture passed over her lovely features once or twice. She continued to recite:
“Once there came a vision glorious, Mystic, dreadful, wondrous fair; Burned itself into his spirit, And abode forever there!
“Never more—from that sweet moment— Gazéd he on womankind; He was dumb to love and wooing And to all their graces blind.
“Full of love for that sweet vision, Brave and pure he took the field; With his blood he stained the letters N. P. B. upon his shield.
“ ‘ Lumen caeli, sancta Rosa! ’ Shouting on the foe he fell, And like thunder rang his war-cry O’er the cowering infidel.
“Then within his distant castle, Home returned, he dreamed his days— Silent, sad—and when death took him He was mad, the legend says.”
When recalling all this afterwards the prince could not for the life of him understand how to reconcile the beautiful, sincere, pure nature of the girl with the irony of this jest. That it was a jest there was no doubt whatever; he knew that well enough, and had good reason, too, for his conviction; for during her recitation of the ballad Aglaya had deliberately changed the letters A.M.D. into N. P. B. He was quite sure she had not done this by accident, and that his ears had not deceived him. At all events her performance—which was a joke, of course, if rather a crude