Graustark Part 20

"But you are no longer ignorant," she said, looking from the window.

"I thought you said you were a mere woman!"

"I am--and that is the trouble!" she said, slowly turning her eyes back to him. Then she abruptly sank to the window seat near his head. "That is the trouble, I say. A woman is a woman, although she be a princess.

Don't you understand why you must not say such things to me?"

"Because you are a princess," he said, bitterly.

"No; because I am a woman. As a woman I want to hear them, as, a princess I cannot. Now, have I made you understand? Have I been bold enough?" Her face was burning.

"You--you don't mean that you--" he half whispered, drawing himself toward her, his face glowing.

"Ach! What have I said?"

"You have said enough to drive me mad with desire for more," he cried, seizing her hand, which she withdrew instantly, rising to her feet.

"I have only said that I wanted to hear you say you had come to see me.

Is not that something for a woman's vanity to value? I am sorry you have presumed to misunderstand me." She was cold again, but he was not to be baffled.

"Then be a woman and forget that you are a princess until I tell you why I came," he cried.

"I cannot! I mean, I will not listen to you," she said, glancing about helplessly, yet standing still within the danger circle.

"I came because I have thought of you and dreamed of you since the day you sailed from New York. G.o.d, can I ever forget that day!"

"Please do not recall--" she began, blus.h.i.+ng and turning to the window.

"The kiss you threw to me? Were you a princess then?" She did not answer, and he paused for a moment, a thought striking him which at first he did not dare to voice. Then he blurted it out. "If you do not want to hear me say these things, why do you stand there?"

"Oh," she faltered.

"Don't leave me now. I want to say what I came over here to say, and then you can go back to your throne and your royal reserve, and I can go back to the land from which you drew me. I came because I love you. Is not that enough to drag a man to the end of the world? I came to marry you if I could, for you were Miss Guggenslocker to me. Then you were within my reach, but not now! I can only love a princess!" He stopped because she had dropped to the couch beside him, her serious face turned appealingly to his, her fingers clasping his hands fiercely.

"I forbid you to continue--I forbid you! Do you hear? I, too, have thought and dreamed of you, and I have prayed that you might come. But you must not tell me that you love me-you shall not!"

"I only want to know that you love me," he whispered.

"Do you think I can tell you the truth?" she cried. "I do not love you!"

Before he had fairly grasped the importance of the contradictory sentences, she left his side and stood in the window, her breast heaving and her face flaming.

"Then I am to believe you do," he groaned, after a moment. "I find a princes and lose a woman!"

"I did not intend that you should have said what you have, or that I should have told you what I have. I knew you loved me or you would not have come to me," she said, softly.

"You would have been selfish enough to enjoy that knowledge without giving joy in return. I see. What else could you have done? A princess!

Oh, I would to G.o.d you were Miss Guggenslocker, the woman I sought!"

"Amen to that!" she said. "Can I trust you never to renew this subject?

We have each learned what had better been left unknown. You understand my position. Surely you will be good enough to look upon me ever afterward as a princess and forget that I have been a woman unwittingly.

I ask you, for your sake and my own, to refrain from a renewal of this unhappy subject. You can see how hopeless it is for both of us. I have said much to you that I trust you will cherish as coming from a woman who could not have helped herself and who has given to you the power to undo her with a single word. I know you will always be the brave, true man my heart has told me you are. You will let the beginning be the end?"

The appeal was so earnest, so n.o.ble that honor swelled in his heart and came from his lips in this promise:

"You may trust me, your Highness. Your secret is worth a thousand-fold more than mine. It is sacred with me. The joy of my life has ended, but the happiness of knowing the truth will never die. I shall remember that you love me--yes, I know you do,--and I shall never forget to love you.

I will not promise that I shall never speak of it again to you. As I lie here, there comes to me a courage I did not know I could feel."

"No, no!" she cried, vehemently.

"Forgive me! You can at least let me say that as long as I live I may cherish and encourage the little hope that all is not dead. Your Highness, let me say that my family never knows when it is defeated, either in love or in war."

"The walls which surround the heart of a princess are black and grim, impenetrable when she defends it, my boasting American," she said, smiling sadly.

"Yet some prince of the realm will batter down the wall and win at a single blow that which a mere man could not conquer in ten lifetimes.

Such is the world."

"The prince may batter down and seize, but he can never conquer. But enough of this! I am the Princess of Graustark; you are my friend, Grenfall Lorry, and there is only a dear friends.h.i.+p between us," she cried, resuming her merry humor so easily that he started with surprise and not a little displeasure.

"And a throne," he added, smiling, how ever.

"And a promise," she reminded him.

"From which I trust I may some day be released," said he, sinking back, afflicted with a discouragement and a determination of equal power. He could see hope and hopelessness ahead.

"By death!"

"No; by life! It may be sooner than you think!"

"You are forgetting your promise already."

"Your Highness's pardon," he begged.

They laughed, but their hearts were sad, this luckless American and hapless sovereign who would, if she could, be a woman.

"It is now three o'clock--the hour when you were to have called to see me," she said, again sitting unconcernedly before him in the window seat. She was not afraid of him. She was a princess.

"I misunderstood you, your highness. I remembered the engagement, but it seems I was mistaken as to the time. I came at three in the morning!"

"And found me at home!"

"In an impregnable castle, with ogres all about."

XII. A WAR AND ITS CONSEQUENCES