"Would you prefer to retire at once?"
"As your Majesty pleases."
This reply was given with great reluctance.
"Be it so, then," and the old man went away, giving me a glance of hate as he passed.
I did not understand the meaning of this development, and stood waiting in silence for the Imperial command to speak.
The silence lengthened itself into minutes, and, when I ventured to glance at the Kaiser, I was disconcerted to find that he was staring at me fixedly, and, as it seemed, very sternly. But there were certain symptoms of unrest and agitation that made me believe that he was forcing himself rather to repress every trace of the feelings I had roused.
When at length he spoke, his voice had a depth and vibration which told me, who knew him so well, how strongly he was moved.
"Why have you done this? Why deceive me with a gorgeous lie of your death and funeral? Why never declare yourself till now?"
There was much more reproach than anger in the tone, and I began to hope again.
"May I tell your Majesty plainly all that occurred? When that mad thing happened on the yacht—a madness that will be an ever-pressing grief and shame to me to my dying hour—I went out feeling that only death at my own hands could wipe out the disgrace of it. I should have killed myself that night but for the reflection that my death might come to be publicly associated with what had happened. Then, the next day, Count von Augener came and told me that unless I was dead within a week my death would be an infamous one. The threat was unneeded, sire. That day I went to Berlin to Dr. Mein S——."