“If? He has. But I will not stoop to complain. Happily his conduct suits my purpose, and for the rest my pride can take care of itself. Your Prince has a right to your loyalty, he is nothing to me but a disagreeable shadow, a mere name that offends me. Let us talk of him no more.”
They had now passed through the belt of wood and arrived at the margin of the lake. It lay before them like a strip of mirror framed in the dark sides over which the shadows reached. At a short distance along the margin stood a small building, an imitation of a classical temple, its cupola on which the moonlight fell, looking like a white ball suspended in the air, since the lower part of the structure was in shadow. From this a short platform or landing-stage extended over the water and terminated in a boat-house. It was towards this temple, their appointed trysting-place, that the Princess and her companion strolled, Minna following them at a discreet interval.
“It makes me sad, my Princess,” he said, “to think that you are not happy, when I am powerless to prevent it. I who would give my life to spare you an hour’s unhappiness. If our paths lay together; as it is they seem to cross only to run wide apart.”
She did not reply at once. “Who can tell?” she said, after they had taken some steps in silence, “what the future may hold for——” she hesitated—“for me? Happily no one, not even our Chancellor! and so there is just a little space for hope to squeeze itself in, although they would try to deny that to one whose birth puts her above the joys of ordinary humanity.”
The same note of bitterness which she had struck that night when they talked on the terrace sounded again. It was evidently becoming the dominant tone in her life’s music.
“Princess,” Ludovic said, “I cannot bear to hear you talk like that. And yet how can I dare——?”
She interrupted him with a little laugh, putting out her hand and just touching his arm for an instant. “Come, my friend,” she said lightly, “you shall have no more of my doleful grievances. We did not meet to waste our time in grumbling at a fate which, after all, may not be as bad as it looks. I love to hear of the world outside our dull court walls, to come in touch with a life which is free and unrestrained by the hateful officialdom in which my lot is cast. Tell me of yourself.”
They had reached the temple. The Princess sat down on a bench by the pillared entrance and signed to him to sit beside her.
“Tell me of yourself.”
“I fear,” he said, “that my history is uneventful enough. It is but that of a young soldier who is now on furlough and travelling for pleasure. My life’s real history starts at a point whence it is as well known to you as to me. And you can continue it as well, or better, than I.”