"Yet because you have dispensed holy bread, and I knelt before the altar as a bride, we must keep faith, you and I. We are bound by our nobility. If we sin, let it be the greater and rarer sin—the sin of the spirit only. Conrad, I love you. Nay, stand still where you are and listen to me—to me, Joan, your brother's wife. For I, too, once for all will clear my soul. I loved you long ere your eyes fell on me. I came as Dessauer's secretary to the city of Courtland. I determined to see the man I was to wed. I saw the prince—my prince as I thought—storm through the lists on his white horse. I saw him bare his head and receive the crown of victory. I stood before him, ashamed yet glad, hosed and doubleted like a boy, in the Summer Pavilion. I heard his gracious words. I loved my prince, who so soon was to be wholly mine. The months slipped past, and I was ever the gladder the faster they sped. The woman stirred within the stripling girl. In half a year, in twenty weeks—in five—in one—in a day—an hour, I would put my hand, my life, myself into his keeping! Then came the glad tumult of the rejoicing folk, the hush of the crowded cathedral. I said, 'Oh, not yet—I will not lift my eyes to my prince until——' We stopped. I lifted my eyes. And lo! the prince was not my prince!"
There was a long and solemn pause between these two on the old watchtower. Never was declaration of love so given and so taken. Conrad remained still as a statue, only his eyes growing great and full of light. Joan stood looking at him, unashamed and fearless. Yet neither moved an inch toward either. A brave woman's will, to do right greatly, stood between them.
She went on.
"Now you know all, my Conrad," she said. "Isle Rugen can never more be the isle of peace to us. You and I have shivered the cup of our happiness. We must part. We can never be merely friends. I must abide because I am a prisoner. You will keep my counsel, promising me to be silent, and together we will contrive a way of escape."
When Conrad answered her again his voice was hoarse and broken, almost like one rheumed with sleeping out on a winter's night. His words whistled in his windpipe, flying from treble to bass and back again.
"Joan, Joan!" he said, and the third time "Joan!" And for the moment he could say no more.
"True love," she said, and her voice was almost caressing, "you and I are barriered from each other. Yet we belong—you to me—I to you! I will not touch your hand, nor you mine. Not even as we have hitherto done. Let ours be the higher, perhaps deadlier sin—the sin of soul and soul. Do you go back to your office, your electorate, while I stay here to do my duty."
"And why not you to your duchy?" said Conrad, who had begun to recover himself.
"Because," she answered, "if I refuse to abide by one of my father's bargains, I have no right to hold by the other. He would have made me your brother's wife. That I have refused. He disinherited his lawful son that I might take the dukedom with me as my dowry. Can I keep that which was only given me in trust for another? Maurice von Lynar shall be Duke Maurice, and Theresa von Lynar shall have her true place as the widow of Henry the Lion!"
And she stood up tall and straight, like a princess indeed.