“I do not forget easily.”
“But you would try?”
“I would try,” said Hedwig, almost in a whisper.
Karl bent over and taking her hands, raised her to her feet.
“Darling,” he said, and suddenly drew her to him. He covered her with hot kisses, her neck, her face, the soft angle below her ear. Then he held her away from him triumphantly. “Now,” he said, “have you forgotten?”
But Hedwig, scarlet with shame, faced him steadily. “No,” she said.
Later in the evening the old King received a present, a rather wilted rose, to which was pinned a card with “Best wishes from Ferdinand William Otto” printed on it in careful letters.
It was the only flower the King had received during his illness.
When, that night, he fell asleep, it was still clasped in his old hand, and there was a look of grim tenderness on the face on the pillow, turned toward his dead son’s picture.