She was seated, pale and stately, in an antique high-backed chair, her eyes grave and sorrowful. Her manner was in singular contrast with that of the previous evening. She was no longer the “Princess Marie” of his love-dream; she seemed to have waked up to the consciousness that she was an empress, between whom and Wilfrid was an impassable gulf. He had been hoping that she might forget her love for him, and yet, now that his wish was realised, it sent a pang to his heart.
“Be seated, Lord Courtenay.”
Grimly contrasting this formal title with the caressingly spoken “Wilfrid” of the previous evening, he sat down and waited for her to proceed.
She set her beautiful eyes upon him and said in a tone approaching almost to awe:—
“Do you know who it was that came upon us last night in the Sumaroff Gardens?”
Last night! The event was distant by four weeks, yet she spoke of it as occurring but a few hours previously. For a moment Wilfrid stared blankly at her. Then the truth flashed upon him, and he realised the cause of her altered manner.
There had happened to her mind one of those phenomena which, by no means rare, are yet extremely puzzling to students of psychology.
The shock of her second immersion in the Neva had nullified the effects of the first, and had caused the return of her memory, with this defect, however, that the intervening period was a complete blank. She had no recollection whatever of the love episodes at Runö.
Wilfrid’s silence, due to his surprise, drew from the Empress a reiteration of her question.
“Do you know who he was?”