Down the street, from the Square, there came a woman—young or old, pretty or ugly, fine dame or drudge, it was too dark to tell. But it was a woman, and she wept as though her heart were broken. For whom and for what did she weep like that? Was she mother, or wife, or sweetheart? Perhaps she wept for Sterkoff, who lay in peril of death. Perhaps she loved big Mistitch, over whom hovered the shadow of swift and relentless doom. Or maybe her sorrow was remote from all that touched them or touched the girl who listened to her sobs—the bitter sobs which she did not seek to check, which filled the night with a dirge of immeasurable sadness. In the darkness, and to Sophy's ignorance of anything individual about her, the woman was like a picture or a sculpture—some type or monument of human woe—a figure of embodied sorrow, crying that all joy ends in tears—in tears—in tears.
She went by, not seeing her watcher. The sound of her sobbing softened with distance, till it died down to a faint, far-off moan. Sophy herself gave one choked sob. Then fell the silence of the night again. Was that its last message—the last comment on what had passed? Tears—and then silence? Was that the end?
Sophy never learned aught of the woman—who she was or why she wept. But her memory retained the vision. It had come as the last impression of a night no moment of which could ever be forgotten. What had it to say of all the rest of the night's happenings? Sophy's exaltation fell from her; but her courage stood—against darkness, solitude, and the unutterable sadness of that forlorn wailing. Dauntlessly she looked forward and upward still, yet with a new insight for the cost.
So for Sophy passed the name-day of King Alexis.
V
A QUESTION OF MEMORY
King Alexis was minded that all proper recognition should be made of Sophy's service to his family. It had been her fortune to protect a life very precious in his eyes. Alien from his son in temperament and pursuits, he had, none the less, considerable affection for him. But there was more than this. With the Prince was bound up the one strong feeling of a nature otherwise easy and careless. The King might go fishing on most lawful days, but it was always a Stefanovitch who fished—a prince who had married a princess of a great house, and had felt able to offer Countess Ellenburg no more than a morganatic union. The work his marriage had begun his son's was to complete. The royal house of Kravonia was still on its promotion; it lay with the Prince to make its rank acknowledged and secure.
Thus Sophy's action loomed large in the King's eyes, and he was indolently indifferent to the view taken of it in the barrack-rooms and the drinking-shops of Slavna. Two days after Mistitch's attempt, he received Sophy at the Palace with every circumstance of compliment. The Prince was not present—he made military duty an excuse—but Countess Ellenburg and her little son were in the room, and General Stenovics, with Markart in attendance, stood beside the King's chair.
Sophy saw a tall, handsome, elderly man with thick, iron-gray hair, most artfully arranged. (The care of it was no small part of the duty of Lepage, the King's French body-servant.) His Majesty's manners were dignified, but not formal. The warmth of greeting which he had prepared for Sophy was evidently increased by the impression her appearance made on him. He thanked her in terms of almost overwhelming gratitude.