“And I shall lose, you think?”
She tossed the cigarette among the red ashes and arose.
“Why should you win, Ferdinand?” she asked—then a sly smile touched her lips—“so far as I have observed, you haven’t troubled even so much as to pray for success.”
He leaned forward and drew her back to the place beside him.
“Patience, Madeline, patience,” said he; “some day I’m going back to Dornlitz.”
“To see the Archduke Armand crowned?” she scoffed.
He bent his head close to her ear. “I trust so—with the diadem that never fades.”
She laughed. “Trust and hope are the weapons of the apathetic. Why don’t you, at least, deal in predictions; sometimes they inspire deeds.”
“Very good,” he said smilingly. “I predict that there is another little game for you and me to play in Dornlitz, and that we shall be there before many days.”
“You are an absent-minded prophet,” she said; “I told you I would not go to Dornlitz.”