The Wanderer's Necklace

I shook my head and answered, "I might have done that long ago, Augusta."

"Then it must be because there is some other woman whom you wish to gain. Why do you always wear that strange necklace?" she added sharply. "Did it belong to this savage girl Iduna, as, from the look of it, it might well have done?"

"Not so, Augusta. She took it for a while, and it brought sorrow on her, as it will do on all women save one who may or may not live to-day."

"Give it me. I have taken a fancy to it; it is unusual. Oh! fear not, you shall receive its value."

"If you wish the necklace, Augusta, you must take the head as well; and my counsel to you is that you do neither, since they will bring you no good luck."

"In truth, Captain Olaf, you anger me with your riddles. What do you mean about this necklace?"

"I mean, Augusta, that I took it from a very ancient grave----"

"That I can believe, for the jeweller who made it worked in old Egypt," she interrupted.

"----and thereafter I dreamed a dream," I went on, "of the woman who wears the other half of it. I have not seen her yet, but when I do I shall know her at once."

"So!" she exclaimed, "did I not tell you that, east or west or north or south, there is some other woman?"

"There was once, Augusta, quite a thousand years ago or more, and there may be again now, or a thousand years hence. That is what I am trying to find out. You say the work is Egyptian. Augusta, at your convenience, will you be pleased to make another captain in my place? I would visit Egypt."

"If you leave Byzantium without express permission under my own hand--not the Emperor's or anybody else's hand; mine, I say--and are caught, your eyes shall be put out as a deserter!" she said savagely.

"As the Augusta pleases," I answered, saluting.

"Olaf," she went on in a more gentle voice, "you are clearly mad; but, to tell truth, you are also a madman who pleases me, since I weary of the rogues and lick-spittles who call themselves sane in Byzantium. Why, there's not a man in all the city who would dare to speak to me as you have spoken to-night, and like that breeze from the sea, it is refreshing. Lend me that necklace, Olaf, till to-morrow morning. I want to examine it in the lamplight, and I swear to you that I will not take it from you or play you any tricks about it."