"It speaks well of your honour," the doctor went on, "that you have felt as you did. I should have explained sooner, but I did not wish to speak of this until it was necessary to Marguerite's happiness. But now that I have spoken there is nothing to stand in the way of your happiness, for Marguerite is as worthy of your love as if she had but made her début on the Royal Level to which she was born. As for what is to be between you, I can only leave it to the best that is in yourselves, and whatever that may be has my blessing."
As I listened to the doctor's words entranced with rapture, the vision of Marguerite floated hazily before my eyes as if she were an ethereal essence that might, at any moment, be snatched away. But as the doctor's words ceased my eyes met Marguerite's and all else seemed to fade but the love light that shone from out their liquid depths.
Forgetting utterly the presence of the man whose words had set us free, our hearts reached out with hungry arms to claim their own.
For us, time lost her reckoning amidst our tears and kisses, and when my brain at last made known to me the existence of other souls than ours, I looked up and found that we were alone. A saucy little clock ticked rhythmically on a mantel. I felt an absurd desire to smash it, for the impudent thing had been running all the while.
CHAPTER IX
IN WHICH I SALUTE THE STATUE OF GOD AND A PSYCHIC EXPERT EXPLORES MY BRAIN AND FINDS NOTHING
~1~
The Chemical Staff called for me at my laboratory to conduct me to the presence of the Emperor. At the elevator we were met by an electric vehicle manned fore and aft by pompous guards. Through the wide, high streets we rolled noiselessly past the decorated facades of the spacious apartments that housed the seventeen thousand members of the House of Hohenzollern.
At times the ample streets broadened into still more roomy avenues where potted trees alternated with the frescoed columns, and beyond which were luxurious gardens and vast statuary halls. On the Level of Free Women the life was one of crowded revelry, of the bauble and delights of carnival, but on the Royal Level there was an atmosphere of luxurious leisure, with vast spaces given over to the privacy of aristocratic idleness.