“If you call me that again, I shall begin to believe that I am a king,” he humored her, “and then, being a king, I presume that it wouldn’t be proper for me to carry you across, or would it? Never really having been a king, I do not know.”
“I think,” replied the girl, “that it would be eminently proper.”
She had difficulty in keeping in mind the fact that this handsome, smiling young man was a dangerous maniac, though it was easy to believe that he was the king. In fact, he looked much as she had always pictured Leopold as looking. She had known him as a boy, and there were many paintings and photographs of his ancestors in her father’s castle. She saw much resemblance between these and the young man.
The brook was very narrow, and the girl thought that it took the young man an unreasonably long time to carry her across, though she was forced to admit that she was far from uncomfortable in the strong arms that bore her so easily.
“Why, what are you doing?” she cried presently. “You are not crossing the stream at all. You are walking right up the middle of it!”
She saw his face flush, and then he turned laughing eyes upon her.
“I am looking for a safe landing,” he said.
Emma von der Tann did not know whether to be frightened or amused. As her eyes met the clear, gray ones of the man she could not believe that insanity lurked behind that laughing, level gaze of her carrier. She found herself continually forgetting that the man was mad. He had turned toward the bank now, and a couple of steps carried them to the low sward that fringed the little brooklet. Here he lowered her to the ground.
“Your majesty is very strong,” she said. “I should not have expected it after the years of confinement you have suffered.”
“Yes,” he said, realizing that he must humor her—it was difficult to remember that this lovely girl was insane. “Let me see, now just what was I in prison for? I do not seem to be able to recall it. In Nebraska, they used to hang men for horse stealing; so I am sure it must have been something else not quite so bad. Do you happen to know?”