"I ought to hate you," said Lucile; "and yet I don't feel that we are enemies."
"We are on opposite sides," he replied.
"Only politics come between us."
"Politics and persons," he added significantly, using a hackneyed phrase.
She looked at him with a startled glance. What did he mean? Had he read deeper into her heart than she herself had dared to look? "Where does that door lead to?" she asked irrelevantly.
"That? It leads to the roof,—to my observatory."
"Oh show it me," she cried. "Is it there you watch the stars?"
"I often look at them. I love them; they are full of suggestions and ideas."
He unlocked the door and led the way up the narrow winding stairs on to the platform. It was, as is usual in Laurania, a delicious night. Lucile walked to the parapet and looked over; all the lamps of the town twinkled beneath, and above were the stars.
Suddenly, far out in the harbour, a broad white beam of light shot out; it was the search-light of a warship. For a moment it swept along the military mole and rested on the battery at the mouth of the channel. The fleet was leaving the port, and picking its way through the difficult passage.