Bennett felt dazed by the unexpected beauty of the picture that met his eyes. For a moment he doubted the reality of the scene before him. Was he dreaming? Was it not certain that a love song, followed by a martial chorus, would soon recall him to his senses; that he would find himself not in a castle but in an opera house?
Suddenly the voice of the princess convinced him of the reality of his surroundings.
“Herr Bennett, accept my thanks. It was kind of you to come to me.”
The words were unexpected. They placed the princess under obligation to a man she had hitherto treated with contemptuous indifference. But her voice was cold and formal. Bennett realized that, like the figures of her ancestors, she was clad in armor. Theirs was of steel, hers of pride.
“It would be the greatest pleasure of my life to serve you, Princess Hilda,” said the American, the tone of his voice leaving no doubt of his sincerity.
There was silence between them for a time. In some remote corner of the castle a door creaked on its hinges. The waiting-woman made a gesture of impatience somewhere in the shadows, and a piece of armor clanked angrily.
“If that is true,” said the princess, with less coldness in her tones than before, “I shall put you to the test at once. Herr Bennett, I am in sore distress.”
How great a sacrifice it was for this proud woman to meet him thus secretly and to confess that he could be of service to her in her hour of trouble, Bennett was sufficiently generous to realize. Irresponsible in many ways, brilliant but erratic, the American was essentially a gentleman. Furthermore, he had never felt for a woman the reverential admiration that the golden-haired vision before him inspired. There was something unearthly in the influence she exercised over him at this moment. The glory of renunciation—the crowning beauty of the age of chivalry—seemed to affect him as he stood there in the shimmering moonlight, a modern knight-errant vowing fealty to a high ideal at a mediæval shrine.
“I repeat,” he said, “my promise to serve you as best I may.”
“Then I implore you, Herr Bennett,” went on the princess in a low voice, “to leave the kingdom at once. The harm you have wrought may never be wholly undone, but you can, at least, save us from further disaster.”