Valérie's smile requested the archduchess to go on. The others followed: the august guests, the equerries, the ladies-in-waiting; they smiled to the betrothed imperial couple, who stood in one of the open window-recesses to let them pass.
They remained alone in the gallery, before the open window:
"I need air," said Valérie, with a sigh.
He made no reply. They stood together in silence, gazing at the evening landscape. He was wearing the uhlan uniform of the Austrian regiment which he commanded; and a new order glittered amongst the others on his breast: the Golden Fleece of Austria. She seemed to have grown older than she was at Altseeborgen, in her pink-silk evening-dress, with wide, puffed sleeves of very pale-green velvet, a tight-curled border of white ostrich-feathers edging the low-cut bodice and the train.
"Shall I leave you alone for a little, Valérie?" he asked, gently.
She shook her head, smiling sadly. Her bosom seemed to heave with uncontrollable emotion.
"Why, Othomar?" she asked. "I am lonely enough at nights, with my thoughts. Leave me alone with them as little as you can...."
She suddenly held out her hand to him:
"Will you forgive your future empress her broken heart?" she asked, suddenly, with a great sob.
And her pale, shrunken face turned full towards him, with two eyes like those of a stricken doe. An irrepressible feeling of pity caused something to well up unexpectedly in his soul; he squeezed her hand and turned away, so as not to weep.