"My father is dead, and with him the dreams which for years we have dreamt together. Was there ever a more cruel irony of Fate than this? Was Fate itself ever more unkind to man or woman? Only a few weeks ago, and I had sold myself, with his consent, so far did our devotion go to serve the sacred cause of our house, to this big, handsome Alsatian—a servant of the German Emperor, the arch-enemy of our country, the owner of the two provinces which my ancestor Louis tore from Germany. I did it because in high politics it is necessary sometimes to sacrifice oneself, partly too because no other man had appealed to me as he did. I knew that he was running tremendous risks; I believed—yes, and I still believe, that he was risking everything—rank, honour, liberty, even life itself, by wearing the uniform of his country's enemy so that he might learn his enemy's secrets.
"He loves me—yes, if ever man loved woman, he loves me—me, Adelaide de Condé, Marquise de Montpensier; and I—ah, mon Dieu, is it possible that the daughter of Marie Antoinette has sunk so low?—I allowed him to believe that I loved him too. He believes it now. I suppose he would still believe it, even if he knew what I know now—that his father is dead, that the secret of the world-empire which he could have given us, that power for which I promised myself to him, so that I might share it with him, has gone, that it is worse than lost, since the Fates have given it into the hands of the enemies of our house.
"And so it is gone—worse than gone—and so, my friend Victor, I am afraid you will have to find out in the course of circumstances that a woman's smiles do not always mean a reflection of the light in her lover's eyes, and that her kisses do not always mean love. It is a pity, because, after all, I believe you are a true Frenchman, even if you wear a German uniform; and if that dream had become a reality, and you and I had shared the throne of France, perhaps I should have loved you as well and as truly as most queens have loved their consorts.
"But, alas, my poor Victor, the sceptre has passed away—for the time being, at least—from the House of Bourbon. It is given into the hands of our enemies, and so you, by force of fate, must stand aside. I shall not tell you this yet, because afterwards, perhaps, you may be useful. I wonder what you would think of me—even you, a man who in the old days would only have been a sort of slave, living or dying socially as the great Louis smiled or frowned upon you—I wonder what you would think if you could look over my shoulder and read this writing and see a woman's soul laid naked on this page. Perhaps you might think me utterly mean and contemptible—you would if you didn't understand; but if you did, if you could see all and understand all—well, then, you might hate me, but I think you would be man enough to respect me.
"At least you are diplomatist enough to know, after all, in the great game of politics, a game that is played for the mastery of kingdoms and peoples, to say nothing of the empire of the world, women have to count themselves as pawns. Even the cleverest, the most brilliant, the most beautiful of us—that is all we are. Sometimes our beauty or the charm of our subtle wit may win the outer senses of the rulers of the world; they may admire us physically or mentally, or both, but even at the best, it is only the man that we enslave. The man goes to sleep for a night, he dreams perhaps of our beauty and the delight of our society, but in the morning it is the statesman that wakes, and he looks back on the little weakness of the night before, and thinks of us as an ordinary man might think of the one extra liqueur which he ought not to have taken after a good dinner.
"And now these English—these people into whose hands Fate has given my heritage! Ah, cruel Fate; why did you not make them hateful, vulgar, common—something that I could hate and tread under foot—something that I could think as far beneath me as the bourgeois canaille of Republican France? But you have made them aristocratic! Lord Orrel's lineage goes back past the days of St Louis. His ancestors fought side by side with mine in the first Crusade. True, they have mixed their blood with that American froth, the skimming of the pot-bouillé of the nations, but still, after all, the old blood tells.
"Lady Olive—how I wish that she were either vulgar or ugly, so that I could hate her!—is a daughter of the Plantagenets fit to mate with a Prince of Bourbon, if there were one worthy of her. Lord Orrel might have been one of those who went with the Eighth Henry to meet Francis on the Field of the Cloth of Gold, patrician in every turn of voice and manner and movement. And Shafto Hardress, who will be Earl of Orrel some day, and master of the world: yes, he is a patrician too; but with him there is something a little different—the American blood perhaps—keen, quick, alert, one moment indolently smoking his cigar and sipping his coffee, the next on his feet, ready to assume the destinies of nations. A man, too, strong and kindly—a man who would risk his life to save a drowning dog, and yet strike down an enemy in his path, so that he might rise a foot or so on the ladder of fame or power. But he is more than that, he wants far more than the empty fame of applause. The fame he wants is that which comes from acknowledged power. You can see the dreamer in his eyes and on his forehead, and you can see the doer on that beautiful, pitiless mouth of his and the square, strong jaw which is under it.
"What a man to love and to be loved by! What would he think, I wonder, if he could read what I am writing here! And yet, are not all things possible? Is it not the unexpected that comes to pass? Why not? Behold, I am left desolate, the garden that I called my heart is a wilderness—a wilderness ploughed up by the ploughshare of sorrow and bitterness, and so it lies fallow. Would it be possible for him to sow the seed for which it is waiting?—and then the harvest would be the empire of the world shared between us! Well, after all, I am not only Adelaide de Condé, daughter of a lost dynasty. I am a woman, with all the passions and ambitions of our race burning hot within me. If I cannot sit on the throne of the Bourbons, why should I not be empress-consort on the throne of a world-wide empire?—why not? It would be a magnificent destiny!"
When she had written this she laid her pen down, put her elbows on the table, and, with her chin between her hands, looked up in silence for some minutes at the moon sailing through rank after rank of fleecy clouds. Then she took up her pen again, and wrote:
"I wonder if there is another woman?"