Later as they sat there in the moonlight, she told Paul more of the unworthy marriage which had been so nearly forced upon her; how Boris being heir-apparent of a Balkan state—Sovna—had been able to enlist the help of the Tsar in coercing her. Many of the Sovnian subjects were Slavs who had emigrated from her own province and the Tsar felt that such a union would do much toward cementing the friendship between the two countries. As for Boris, political reasons had little to do with the suit. Her fortune was all he cared for. And at the thought of his perfidy, so nearly triumphant, she trembled anew with horror.
And then as Paul comforted her, he told her with amusement how he had interpreted the note that she had written him in Paris—that he had thought her a secret agent of the Dalmatian government.
The lady laughed at that.
"And when, pray, were you disillusioned?" she asked him. "Two days ago you called me 'Princess'—in the garden here. How did you know that?"
Paul looked at her in amazement.
"Princess!" he repeated. And then he remembered that he had used the word—as an endearing name, that seemed so well to fit his love.
"What do you mean, my Natalie?" he cried. "Are you really of royal blood?"
"Yes, Paul," she answered. "You did not know it then? I wanted to appear to you as a commoner—just a normal, every day woman. And see! you loved me when you thought I was a mere servant! That is the wonderful part of it all to me."
Yet Paul's heart sank as the possible meaning of the news started forth to his consciousness. Was not her rank an impassable barrier between them? he asked himself. Must he again return to England to drag out the rest of life alone, with his love the width of a continent away?
He asked these things with a rush of words that fell from his trembling lips.