"No! Don't suggest such a thing—yet." She began the protest eagerly and ended it in confusion.
"Alas, you mean that some day banishment is not unlikely?"
"You don't expect to be a guard all your life, do you?"
"Not to serve the princess of Graustark, I confess. My aim is much higher. If God lets me choose the crown I would serve, I shall enlist for life. The crown I would serve is wrought of love, the throne I would kneel before is a heart, the sceptre I would follow is in the slender hand of a woman. I could live and die in the service of my own choosing. But I am only the humble goat-hunter whose hopes are phantoms, whose ideals are conceived in impotence."
"That was beautiful," murmured Beverly, looking up, fascinated for the moment.
"Oh, that I had the courage to enlist," he cried, bending low once more. She felt the danger in his voice, half tremulous with some thing more than loyalty, and drew her hand away from a place of instant jeopardy. It was fire that she was playing with, she realized with a start of consciousness. Sweet as the spell had grown to be, she saw that it must be shattered.
"It is getting frightfully late," she sharply exclaimed. "They'll wonder where I've gone to. Why, it's actually dark."
"It has been dark for half an hour, your highness," said he, drawing himself up with sudden rigidness that distressed her. "Are you going to return to the castle?"
"Yes. They'll have out a searching party pretty soon if I don't appear."
"You have been good to me to-day," he said thoughtfully. "I shall try to merit the kindness. Let me—"