“You couldn’t help risking your life to—” He dared not finish.
“It was to save—” Nor was there any end for her sentence.
Then perhaps it was not strange that he forgot certain restrictions which a Royal man, in conversing with a commoner, is not supposed to forget. In fact, he forgot that he was Royal, or that she was not, and his voice grew unsteady, his tone eager, as if he had been some poor subaltern with the girl of his first love.
“There’s something I must show you,” he said. Opening a button of the military coat blazing with jewels and orders, he drew out a loop of thin gold chain. At the end dangled a small, bright thing that flashed under a star of electric light.
“My ring!” breathed Virginia.
Thus died the Emperor’s intention to ignore the day that had been theirs together.
“Your ring! You gave it to Leo. He kept it. He will always keep it. Have I surprised you?”
Virginia felt it would be best to say “yes,” but instead she answered “no”; for pretty, white fibs cannot be told under such a look in a man’s eyes, by a girl who loves him.
“I have not? When did you guess the truth? Yesterday, or—”