She did not move, neither did Wogan. They both sat still as statues. They had come to the great crisis of their destiny. A change of posture, a gesture, an assumed expression which might avert the small, the merely awkward indiscretions of the tongue, they both knew to be futile. It was in the mind of each of them that somehow without their participation the truth would out that night; for the dawn was so long in coming.
"All the way up from Peri," said Wogan, suddenly, "I strove to make real to myself the ignominy, the odium, the scandal."
"But you could not," said Clementina, with a nod of comprehension, as though that inability was a thing familiar to her.
"When I reached the hut, and saw that fan of light spreading from the window, as it spread over the lawn beyond Stuttgart, I remembered Otto von [pg 293.] Ahlen and his talk of Königsmarck. I tried to hear the menaces."
"But you could not."
"No. I saw you through the window," he cried, "stretched out upon that couch, supple and young and sweet. I saw the lamplight on your hair, searching out the gold in its dark brown. I could only remember how often I have at nights wakened and reached out my hands in the vain dream that they would meet in its thick coils, that I should feel its silk curl and nestle about my fingers. There's the truth out, though it's a familiar truth to you ever since I held you in my arms beneath the stars upon the road to Ala."
"It was known to me a day before," said she; "but it was known to you so long ago as that night in the garden."
"Oh, before then," cried Wogan.
"When? Let the whole truth be known, since we know so much."
"Why, on that first day at Ohlau."