"Perhaps, perhaps! I only know the pain it was intended to relieve goes on." Then, regarding her moodily, not angrily, nor even impatiently, he continued: "Did I not know thee true as thou art fair, O Princess, and good and sincere as thou art brave, I might suspect thee."
"Of what, my Lord?"
"Of an intent to compass my misery. Thou dost stop my mouth. I may not declare the purpose with which I came—I to whom it was of most interest—or if I do, I am forestopped saying, 'I thought better of it, and told her nothing.' Yet it was an honorable purpose nursed by sweet dreams, and by hopes such as souls feed upon, strengthening themselves for trials of life; I must carry it back with me, not for burial in my own breast, but for gossips to rend and tear, and make laughter of—the wonder and amusement of an unfeeling city. How many modes of punishment God keeps in store for the chastening of those who love Him!"
"It is beggarly saying I sympathize"—
"No, no—wait!" he cried, passionately. "Now it breaks upon me. I may not offer thee a seat on my throne, or give a hand to help thee up to it; for the present I will not declare I love thee; yet harm cannot come of telling thee what has been. Thou hadst my love at our first meeting. I loved thee then. As a man I loved thee, nor less as an Emperor because a man. Thou wast lovely with the loveliness of the angels. I saw thee in a light not of earth, and thou wert transparent as the light. I descended from the throne to thee thinking thou hadst collected all the radiance of the sun wasting in the void between stars, and clothed thyself in it."
"Oh, my Lord"—
"Not yet, not yet"—
"Blasphemy and madness!"
"Be it so!" he answered, with greater intensity. "This once I speak as a lover who was—a lover making last memories of the holy passion, to be henceforth accounted dead. Dead? Ah, yes!—to me—dead to me!"
She timidly took the hand he dropped upon his knee at the close of a long sigh.