“Part of it is quite flat. We can take a ball up there, and get some exercise while we’re about it.”
As a matter of fact, Nikky was not altogether unselfish. He would visit the roof again, where for terrible, wonderful moments he had held Hedwig in his arms. On a pilgrimage, indeed, like that of the Crown Prince to Etzel, Nikky would visit his shrine.
So they went to the roof. They went through silent corridors, past quiet rooms where the suite waited and spoke in whispers, past the very door of the chamber where the Council sat in session, and where reports were coming in, hour by hour, as to the condition of things outside. Past the apartment of the Archduchess Annunciata, where Hilda, released from lessons, was trying the effect of jet earrings against her white skin, and the Archduchess herself was sitting by her fire, and contemplating the necessity for flight. In her closet was a small bag, already packed in case of necessity. Indeed, more persons than the Archduchess Annunciata had so prepared. Miss Braithwaite, for instance, had spent a part of the night over a traveling-case containing a small boy’s outfit, and had wept as she worked, which was the reason for her headache.
The roof proved quite wonderful. One could see the streets crowded with people, could hear the soft blare of distant horns.
“The Scenic Railway is in that direction,” observed the Crown Prince, leaning on the balustrade. “If there were no buildings we could see it.”
“Right here,” Nikky was saying to himself. “At this very spot. She held out her arms, and I—”
“It looks very interesting,” said Prince Ferdinand William Otto. “Of course we can’t see the costumes, but it is better than nothing.”
“I kissed her,” Nikky was thinking, his heart swelling under his very best tunic. “Her head was on my breast, and I kissed her. Last of all, I kissed her eyes—her lovely eyes.”
“If I fell off here,” observed the Crown Prince in a meditative voice, “I would be smashed to a jelly, like the child at the Crystal Palace.”
“But now she hates me,” said Nikky’s heart, and dropped about the distance of three buttons. “She hates me. I saw it in her eyes this morning. God!”