“I have been thinking of it while we talked, and since you told me of the turn which matters have taken,” she said, her voice low and anxious, as if she were undecided.
I remembered my despatch to the Foreign Office urging that support should be given to her. But it was not in my power to wish that she should go; for I knew that it might still mean the breaking asunder of our paths in life.
“What do you think, Gerald?”
“I cannot think on such a subject, I can only fear,” I replied in a tone as low and tense as her own. “I might lose you then.”
“Shall the woman or the Princess answer it?” she asked, her face all womanly with the light of love.
“The lover, Christina,” I whispered.
“Then it is answered: my place is here,” she said softly. “The woman is stronger than the Princess where you are concerned, Gerald; or should I say weaker?” she added, smiling up to me.
“We will leave it soon for the wife to decide the term,” said I, and the answer brought a vivid blush to her face. But it pleased her, for she sighed happily as she let her head sink contentedly on my shoulder.
It is six years since the stirring events happened of which I have just written, sitting at my study table in my lovely English home. As I lay the pen down and close my eyes in reverie two memory pictures come before me. The one black-edged with the gloom of sorrow and death, the other radiant with the glowing promise of since realised happiness.