“My rooms open on a lawn. More than once I’ve come out into the darkness, when all the household was sleeping. Some times I have walked to this very spot where you and I stand now—heart to heart for the first time, my darling—asking myself whether there were any way out of the labyrinth. It was not until I brought you here and saw you by my side with the moon rays for a crown, that a flash of blinding light seemed to pierce the clouds. Suddenly I saw all things clearly, and though there will be difficulties, I count them as overcome.”
“Still you haven’t answered my question,” said Virginia in a low, strained voice.
“I’m coming to that now. It was best that you should know first all that’s been troubling my heart and brain during these few, bitter-sweet days which have taught me so much. You know, men who have their place at the head of great nations can’t think first of themselves, or even of those they love better than themselves. If they hope to snatch at personal happiness, they must take the one way open to them, and be thankful.
“Don’t do me the horrible injustice to believe that I wouldn’t be proud to show you to my subjects as their Empress; but instead, I can offer only what men of Royal blood for hundreds of years have offered to women whom they honored as well as loved. You must have heard even in England of what is called a morganatic marriage? It is that I offer you.”
With a cry of pain—the cruel pain of wounded, disappointed love—the Princess tore her hand from his.
“Never!” she exclaimed. “It’s an insult.”
“An insult? No, a thousand times no. I see that even now you don’t understand.”
“I think that I understand very well, too well,” said Virginia, brokenly. The beautiful fairy palace of happiness that she had watched as it grew, lay shattered, destroyed in the moment which ought to have seen its triumphant completion.
