yawned, smoked and laughed a little and then retired. Prokop sat motionless on a seat, twisting a little metal box in his disfigured fingers. Now and then, like a child, he rattled it about. Inside was the broken spoon, the ring and the nameless substance.
Mr. Holz approached cautiously. “She can’t come to-day,” he said respectfully.
“I know.”
Lights appeared in the windows of the guest’s suite. They were those of the “Prince’s apartments.” And now the whole castle was illuminated, aerial and unsubstantial as in a dream. Everything was to be found within: unheard of wealth, beauty, ambition, fame and dignity, breasts covered with orders, amusements, the art of living, delicacy, wit and self-regard—as if they were different people, different from the like of us. . . .
Again Prokop rattled his little box like a child. Gradually the lights went out in the windows; that light which was still on belonged to Rohn and that red one to the bedroom of the Princess. Uncle Rohn opened the window to enjoy the cool of the evening and then began to pace from the door to the window, from the window to the door, uninterruptedly. No movement was to be seen in the room of the Princess.
Then even Uncle Rohn put out his light and there was only one left. Would human thought find a means of forcing its way through this hundred or two metres of dumb space and reach the waiting mind of another being? What message have I for
