"Then—what—--"
"Do you not understand, my sweet, that I have asked you to be my wife? 170 What can a man ask more?"
"Your wife yet not the Empress. How can the two be separated?"
He tried to take her once more in his arms, but when he saw that she would stand aloof, he held his love in control and waited. He was certain that he need not wait long, for not only had he laid his heart at her feet, but, to do that, he pledged himself to a tremendous sacrifice. The step upon which he had decided, in the moment when passion for her had overcome all prudent scruples, would create dissension among his people, rouse fierce anger in the heart of one who had been his second father, incense England and Germany because of the young Princess whose name rumour had already coupled with his, and altogether raise a fierce storm about his ears. When she had reflected, when she fully understood, she would be his, now and forever.
Very tenderly he took her hand and lifted it to his lips; then, when she did not snatch it from him—(because he was to have his chance of explanation)—he kept it between both his own, as he talked on. 171
"Dearest one," he said, "when I first knew that I loved you (as I had not known it was in my nature to love a woman), for your sake and my own I would have avoided seeing you too often. This I tell you frankly. I did not see how, in honour, such a love could end except in sorrow for me—even for you, if it were possible that I could make you care. If you and Lady de Courcy had stayed at the hotel, I think I could have been faithful to the resolve. But when Baroness von Lynar spoke to me of your coming here, at the time of my own visit, my heart leaped up. I said in my mind: At least I shall have the happiness of seeing her every day, for a time, without doing anything to darken her future. I shall have these days always to remember, when she has gone out of my life, and no harm will be done, except to myself. Still, I only thought of parting, in the end—for that seemed in—itable. But not one night have I slept since I have been here at Lynarberg. My rooms open on a lawn at the other side of the house. Often I came out 172 here in the darkness, when every one else was sleeping; and sometimes I have stood on this very spot, where you and I stand together now—heart to heart for the first time, my darling—thinking whether, if you should care, there was any way to be found out of such difficulties as mine. At last a ray of light seemed to shine through the clouds. There was much to be overcome on both sides, and my mind was not yet clear, until I brought you here with me to-night. When I saw you by my side, the moonlight shining on your face, I caught at this way of binding our lives together. I knew that my life was worth nothing to me, unless it were to be shared with you."
"Yet you have not answered my question," said Sylvia.
"I am coming to that now. It was best that you should hear first what has been in my heart and mind, these last days which have held more joy for me than all the years I have left behind. You know that men who have their place at the head of a great nation cannot think merely of themselves and those they love better than themselves. If they 173 desire to snatch at personal happiness, they must take the only way open to them that is all. Don't do me the injustice to believe that I would not be proud to show you to my subjects as their Empress; but, instead, I can only offer you what men of Royal blood have for hundreds of years offered women whom they respected as well as loved. You have heard of an arrangement which in your country is called a morganatic marriage? That is what I propose."
With a low cry of pain—the bitter pain of disappointed love and wounded pride—Sylvia tore her hand from his.
"Never!" she exclaimed. "It is an insult."