"I hope I never hear anyone else uttering the name," said Fenton ecstatically. "After hearing it on your lips it would seem profanation from any other source."
"It is rather a nice name, although it seemed so strange at first," she said judicially, as she repeated it over several times almost in a whisper. "I used to wonder if I could ever come to call you that."
"Now you've given yourself away," cried Fenton triumphantly. "If you wondered that, you couldn't have made up your mind that you would give me up."
"I have indulged much in day dreams since I met you, dear," she said, "but—it would have made no difference. My father would never have consented to my marrying you, not even if you had saved his life many times and had been a thousand times too good for an ignorant little Ironian princess—as you are. And I would never have disobeyed him. You do not understand us, my own. We Ironians are bound by custom, by traditions of which you have no conception in your free country. It would have broken my heart, but—I would have remained Princess Olga all my life."
Fenton was silent, pondering this thought, terrifying to him even in negative perspective.
"But I am now quite free in my conscience," she went on. "I thought to save my father's life by marrying the man I feared, and the good Father of all gave me instead the man I loved. It must have been Mis will that I should come to you. And so I look forward to the future before us with no misgivings, dark though it may be at times. And I am so happy."
There was another and longer interruption. The suggestion of future troubles contained in her words was welcome to Fenton, for it promised an opportunity to protect her, to assert his right and power to shield her. His arm about her tightened almost fiercely.
"I begin to see that after all I owe a lot to Miridoff," he said.
"You will have to take me away from Ironia," said Olga, a little out of breath from the ardour of her husband's embrace. "I could never go back to court. My father will refuse to forgive me at first, and will perhaps talk of having our marriage set aside. But in time he will perhaps learn to forgive his wayward girl." She paused for a moment.
"You see what you have done," she went on with a gaiety that did not entirely mask the strain of sadness beneath. "Tell me, my lord and master, what you are going to do with me now? I begin a new life with you."