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He was hot and nervous, and Truda met him with the splendid hauteur she could assume upon occasion to quell interference with her actions. Behind her, upon a couch, the child was lying wrapped in a shawl, looking on the pair of them and Truda's hovering maid with great almond eyes set in a little smooth swarthy face. "Madame, Madame!" cried M. Vaucher. "What is this I hear?
Behind her, a little drawn in that early hour, came Truda's manager, Monsieur Vaucher. "Madame finds herself well?" he asked solicitously, but shivering somewhat. "Madame is in the mood for further triumphs?" Truda gave him a smile.
"What a happiness for him, then!" he said gravely, and opened the door of her dressing-room for her. Prince Sarasin lost no time in making Truda's word good. By the time she was ready to receive him, he was waiting for admission. He strode in, burly in his uniform, and bowed to her effusively, full of admiration.
When Sila heard this, he begged Ivashka to accompany him to her kingdom; so they set out and travelled on and on till they reached that country. Now, Queen Truda's kingdom was surrounded by a palisade; and upon every stake was stuck a man's head, except one, which had no head.
Years of feeling the public pulse through the box-office had not stripped him of a certain shrewd perception of what was fine and what was mean in drama; and he chuckled and wagged his head in the wings as minute by minute the spell of Truda's genius strengthened, till there came that tenseness of silence in the great theatre which few actors live to know, and Truda, vibrant, taut- nerved, and superb, plucked at men's hearts as if they had been harp- strings.
Truda's lips parted, but she said nothing. "Ah, perhaps your Excellency does not understand?" suggested the man. The cynical humor in his face had no resemblance to mirth. "They were Jews, you see Jews." "Judenhetze?" asked Truda. She had heard of old of that strange fever that seizes certain peoples and inflames them with a rabid lust for Jewish blood. "Yes," answered the Jew.
Be quick!" He was nervous about leaving his horses, but Truda's tone was compelling. With gruntings and ponderously he obeyed, and the carriage-lamp shed its light over the matter in hand. Under the wall, with one clutching hand outspread as though to grip at the stones of the pavement, lay the body of a woman, her face upturned and vacant.
Could he have known the contents of that note and their significance, with what fervor of refusal he would have cast it back at her! But he knew nothing, save that Truda's acting restored to him sometimes for an hour or two the emotions of his youth, and he was very much her servant.
Then he said to Sila Tsarevich: "See you not the evil spirits which troubled your wife? She is now relieved from them." And, so saying, he laid the parts of Truda's body together, sprinkled them with the water of life, and the Queen was instantly sound and whole as before.
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