Crockett Samuel Rutherford
Joan of the Sword Hand

CHAPTER XXXIX
PRINCE WASP STINGS

Margaret did not answer her tormentor's taunt. Her arms went about Maurice's neck, and her lips, salt with the overflowing of tears, sought his in a last kiss. The officer of the Prince's guard touched her on the shoulder. She shook him haughtily off, and then, having completed her farewells, she loosened her hands and went slowly backward towards the further end of the hall with her eyes still upon the man she loved.

"Stay, Berghoff," said Prince Louis suddenly; "let the Princess remain where she is. Cross your swords in front of her. I desire that she shall hear what I have to say to this young gentleman."

"And also," added Prince Ivan, "I desire the noble Princess to remember that this has been granted by the Prince upon my intercession. In the future, it may gain me more of her favour than I have had the good fortune to enjoy in the past!"

Maurice stood alone, his tall slender figure supple and erect. One hand rested easily upon his swordless thigh, while the other still held the plumed hat he snatched up as in frantic haste he had followed Margaret from the Summer Palace.

There ensued a long silence in which the Sparhawk eyed his captors haughtily, while Prince Louis watched him from under the grey penthouse of his eyebrows.

Then three several times the Prince essayed to speak, and as often utterance was choked within him. His feelings could only find vent in muttered imprecations, half smothered by a consuming rage. Then Prince Ivan crossed over and laid his hand restrainingly on his arm. The touch seemed to calm his friend, and, after swallowing several times as there had been a knot in his throat, at last he spoke.

For the second time in his life Maurice von Lynar stood alone among his enemies; but this time in peril far deadlier than among the roisterous pleasantries of Castle Kernsberg. Yet he was as little daunted now as then. Once on a time a duchess had saved him. Now a princess loved him. And even if she could not save him, still that was better.

"So," cried Prince Louis, in the curiously uneven voice of a coward lashing himself into a fury, "you have played out your treachery upon a reigning Prince of Courtland. You cheated me at Castle Kernsberg. Now you have made me a laughing-stock throughout the Empire. You have shamed a maiden of my house, my sister, the daughter of my father. What have you to say ere I order you to be flung out from the battlements of the western tower?"

"Ere it comes to that I shall have something to say, Prince Louis," interrupted Prince Wasp, smiling. "We must not waste such dainty powers of masquerade on anything so vulgar as the hangman's rope."

"Gentlemen and princes," Maurice von Lynar answered, "that which I have done I have done for the sake of my mistress, the Lady Joan, and I am not afraid. Prince Louis, it was her will and intent never to come to Courtland as your wife. She would not have been taken alive. It was therefore the duty of her servants to preserve her life, and I offered myself in her stead. My life was hers already, for she had preserved it. She had given. It was hers to take. With the chief captains of Kernsberg I plotted that she should be seized and carried to a place of refuge wherein no foe could even find her. There she abides with chosen men to guard her. I took her place and was delivered up that Kernsberg might be cleared of its enemies. Gladly I came that I might pay a little of my debt to my sovran lady and liege mistress, Joan Duchess of Kernsberg and Hohenstein."

"Nobly perorated!" cried Prince Ivan, clapping his hands. "Right sonorously ended. Faith, a paladin, a deliverer of oppressed damsels, a very carnival masquerader! He will play you the dragon, this fellow, or he will act Saint George with a sword of lath! He will amble you the hobby-horse, or be the Holy Virgin in a miracle play. Well, he shall play in one more good scene ere I have done with him. But, listen, Sir Mummer, in all this there is no word of the Princess Margaret. How comes it that you so loudly proclaim having given yourself a noble sacrifice for one fair lady, when at the same time you are secretly married to another? Are you a deliverer of ladies by wholesale? Speak to this point. Let us have another noble period – its subject my affianced bride. Already we have heard of your high devotion to Prince Louis's wife. Well – next!"

But it was the Princess who spoke from where she stood behind the crossed swords of her guards.

"That I will answer. I am a woman, and weak in your hands, princes both. You have set the grasp of rude men-at-arms upon the wrist of a Princess of Courtland. But you can never compel her soul. Brother Louis, my father committed me to you as a little child – have I not been a loving and a faithful sister to you? And till this Muscovite came between, were you not good to me? Wherefore have you changed? Why has he made you cruel to your little Margaret?"

Prince Louis turned towards his sister, moving his hands uncertainly and even deprecatingly.

Ivan moved quickly to his side and whispered something which instantly rekindled the light of anger in the weakling's eyes.

"You are no sister of mine," he said; "you have disgraced your family and yourself. Whether it be true or no that you are married to this man matters little!"

"It is true; I do not lie!" said Margaret recovering herself.

"So much the worse, then, and he shall suffer for it. At least I can hide, if I cannot prevent, your shame!"

"I will never give him up; nothing on earth shall part our love!"

Prince Ivan smiled delicately, turning to where she stood at the end of the hall.

"Sweet Princess," he said, "divorce is, I understand, contrary to your holy Roman faith. But in my land we have discovered a readier way than any papal bull. Be good enough to observe this" – he held a dagger in his hand. "It is a little blade of steel, but a span long, and narrow as one of your dainty fingers, yet it will divorce the best married pair in the world."

"But neither dagger nor the hate of enemies can sever love," Margaret answered proudly. "You may slay my husband, but he is mine still. You cannot twain our souls."

The Prince shrugged his shoulder and opened his palms deprecatingly.

"Madam," he said, "I shall be satisfied with twaining your bodies. In holy Russia we are plain men. We have a saying, 'No one hath ever seen a soul. Let the body content you!' When this gentleman is – what I shall make him, he is welcome to any communion of souls with you to which he can attain. I promise you that, so far as he is concerned, you shall find me neither exigent lover nor jealous husband!"

The Princess looked at Maurice. Her eyes had dwelt defiantly on the Prince of Muscovy whilst he was speaking, but now a softer light, gentle yet brave, crept into them.

"Fear not, my husband," she said. "If the steel divide us, the steel can also unite. They cannot watch so close, or bind so tight, but that I can find a way. Or, if iron will not pierce, fire burn, or water drown, I have a drug that will open the door which leads to you. Fear not, dearest, I shall yet meet you unashamed, and as your loyal wife, without soil or stain, look into your true eyes."

"I declare you have taught your mistress the trick of words!" cried the Prince delightedly. "Count von Löen, the Lady Margaret has quite your manner. She speaks to slow music."

But even the sneers of Prince Ivan could not filch the greatness out of their loves, and Prince Louis was obviously wavering. Ivan's quick eye noted this and he instantly administered a fillip.

"Are you not moved, Louis?" he said. "How shamelessly hard is your heart! This handsome youth, whom any part sets like a wedding favour and fits like his own delicate skin, condescends to become your relative. Where is your welcome, your kinsmanlike manners? Go, fall upon his neck! Kiss him on either cheek. Is he not your heir? He hath only sequestrated your wife, married your sister. Your only brother is a childless priest. There needs only your decease to set him on the throne of the Princedom. Give him time. How easily he has compassed all this! He will manage the rest as easily. And then – listen to the shouting in the streets. I can hear it already. 'Long live Maurice the Bastard, Prince of Courtland!'"

And the Prince of Muscovy laughed loud and long. But Prince Louis did not laugh. His eyes glared upon the prisoner like those of a wild beast caught in a corner whence it wishes to flee but cannot.

"He shall die – this day shall be his last. I swear it!" he cried. "He hath mocked me, and I will slay him with my hand."

He drew the dagger from his belt. But in the centre of the hall the Sparhawk stood so still and quiet that Prince Louis hesitated. Ivan laid a soft hand upon his wrist and as gently drew the dagger out of his grasp.

"Nay, my Prince, we will give him a worthier passing than that. So noble a knight-errant must die no common death. What say you to the Ukraine Cross, the Cross of Steeds? I have here four horses, all wild from the steppes. This squire of dames, this woman-mummer, hath, as now we know, four several limbs. By a strange coincidence I have a wild horse for each of these. Let limbs and steeds be severally attached, my Cossacks know how. Upon each flank let the lash be laid – and – well, the Princess Margaret is welcome to her liege lord's soul. I warrant she will not desire his fair body any more."

At this Margaret tottered, her knees giving way beneath her, so that her guards stood nearer to catch her if she should fall.

"Louis – my brother," she cried, "do not listen to the monster. Kill my husband if you must – because I love him. But do not torture him. By the last words of our mother, by the memory of our father, by your faith in the Most Pitiful Son of God, I charge you – do not this devilry."

Prince Ivan did not give Louis of Courtland time to reply to his sister's appeal.

"The most noble Princess mistakes," he murmured suavely. "Death by the Cross of Steeds is no torture. It is the easiest and swiftest of deaths. I have witnessed it often. In my country it is reserved for the greatest and the most distinguished. No common felon dies by the Cross of Steeds, but men whose pride it is to die greatly. Ere long we will show you on the plain across the river that I speak the truth. It is a noble sight, and all Courtland shall be there. What say you, Louis? Shall this springald seat himself in your princely chair, or – shall we try the Cross of the Ukraine?"

"Have it your own way, Prince Ivan!" said Louis, and went out without another word. The Muscovite stood a moment looking from Maurice to Margaret and back again. He was smiling his inscrutable Oriental smile.

"The Prince has given me discretion," he said at last. "I might order you both to separate dungeons, but I am an easy man and delight in the domestic affections. I would see the parting of two such faithful lovers. I may learn somewhat that shall stand me in good stead in the future. It is my ill-fortune that till now I have had little experience of the gentler emotions."

He raised his hand.

"Let the Princess pass," he cried.

The guards dropped their swords to their sides. They had been restraining her with as much gentleness as their duty would permit.

Instantly the Princess Margaret ran forward with eager appeal on her face. She dropped on her knees before the Prince of Muscovy and clasped her hands in supplication.

"Prince Ivan," she said, "I pray you for the love of God to spare him, to let him go. I promise never to see him more. I will go to a nunnery. I will look no more upon the face of day."

"That, above all things, I cannot allow," said the Prince. "So fair a face must see many suns – soon, I trust, in Moscow city, and by my side."

"Margaret," said the Sparhawk, "it is useless to plead. Do not abase yourself in the presence of our enemy. You cannot touch a man's heart when his breast covers a stone. Bid me goodbye and be brave. The time will not be long."

From the place where Margaret the loving woman had kneeled Margaret the Princess rose to her feet at the word of her husband. Without deigning even to glance at Ivan, who had stooped to assist her, she passed him by and went to Von Lynar. He held out both his hands and took her little trembling ones in a strong assured clasp.

The Prince watched the pair with a chill smile.

"Margaret," said Maurice, "this will not be for long. What matters the ford, so that we both pass over the river. Be brave, little wife. The crossing will not be wide, nor the water deep. They cannot take from us that which is ours. And He who joined us, whose priest blessed us, will unite us anew when and where it seemeth good to Him!"

"Maurice, I cannot let you die – and by such a terrible death!"

"Dearest, what does it matter? I am yours. Wherever my spirit may wander, I am yours alone. I will think of you when the Black Water shallows to the brink. On the further side I will wait a day and then you will meet me there. To you it may seem years. It will be but a day to me. And I shall be there. So, little Margaret, good-night. Do not forget that I love you. I would have made you very happy, if I had had time – ah, if I had had time!"

Like a child after its bedside prayer she lifted up her face to be kissed.

"Good-night, Maurice," she said simply. "Wait for me; I shall not be long after!"

She laid her brow a moment on his breast. Then she lifted her head and walked slowly and proudly out of the hall. The guard fell in behind her, and Maurice von Lynar was left alone with the Prince of Muscovy.

As the door closed upon the Princess a sudden devilish grimace of fury distorted the countenance of Prince Ivan. Hitherto he had been studiously and even caressingly courteous. But now he strode swiftly up to his captive and smote him across the mouth with the back of his gauntleted hand.

"That!" he said furiously, "that for the lips which have kissed hers! Soon, soon I shall pay the rest of my debt. Yes, by the most high God, I will pay it – with usury thereto!"

A thin thread of scarlet showed upon the white of Maurice von Lynar's chin and trickled slowly downwards. But he uttered no word. Only he looked his enemy very straightly in the eyes, and those of the Muscovite dropped before that defiant fierce regard.

CHAPTER XL
THE LOVES OF PRIEST AND WIFE

It remains to tell briefly how certain great things came to pass. We must return to Isle Rugen and to the lonely grange on the spit of sand which separates the Baltic from the waters of the Freshwater Haff.

Many things have happened there since Conrad of Courtland, Cardinal and Archbishop, awaked to find by his bedside the sleeping girl who was his brother's wife.

On Isle Rugen, where the pines grew dense and green, gripping and settling the thin sandy soil with their prehensile roots, Joan and Conrad found themselves much alone. The lady of the grange was seldom to be seen, save when all were gathered together at meals. Werner von Orseln and the Plassenburg captains, Jorian and Boris, played cards and flung harmless dice for white stones of a certain size picked from the beach. Dumb Max Ulrich went about his work like a shadow. The ten soldiers mounted guard and looked out to sea with their elbows on their knees in the intervals. Three times a week the solitary boat, with Max Ulrich at the oars, crossed to the landing-place on the mainland and returned laden with provisions. The outer sea was empty before their eyes, generally deep blue and restless with foam caps. Behind them the Haff lay vacant and still as oil in a kitchen basin.

But it was not dull on Isle Rugen.

The osprey flashed and fell in the clear waters of the Haff, presently to re-emerge with a fish in his beak, the drops running like a broken string of pearls from his scales. Rough-legged buzzards screamed their harsh and melancholy cry as on slanted wings they glided down inclines of sunshine or lay out motionless upon the viewless glorious air. Wild geese swept overhead out of the north in V-shaped flocks. The sea-gulls tacked and balanced. All-graceful terns swung thwartways the blue sky, or plunged headlong into the long green swells with the curve and speed of falling stars.

It was a place of forgetting, and in the autumn time it is good to forget. For winter is nigh, when there will be time and enough to think all manner of sad thoughts.

So in the September weather Joan and Conrad walked much together. And as Joan forgat Kernsberg and her revenge, Rome and his mission receded into the background of the young man's thoughts. Soon they met undisguisedly without fear or shame. This Isle Rugen was a place apart – a haven of refuge not of their seeking. Mars had driven one there, Neptune the other.

Yet when Conrad woke in his little north-looking room in the lucid pearl-grey dawn he had some bad moments. His vows, his priesthood, his princedom of Holy Church were written in fire before his eyes. His heart weighed heavy as if cinctured with lead. And, deeper yet, a rat seemed to gnaw sharp-toothed at the springs of his life.

Also, when the falling seas, combing the pebbly beaches with foamy teeth, rattled the wet shingle, Joan would ofttimes wake from sleep and lie staring wide-eyed at the casement. Black reproach of self brooded upon her spirit, as if a foul bird of night had fluttered through the open window and settled upon her breast. The poor folk of Kernsberg – her fatherland invaded and desolate, the Sparhawk, the man who ought to have been the ruler she was not worthy to be, the leader in war, the lawgiver in peace – these reproachful shapes filled her mind so that sleep fled and she lay pondering plans of escape and deliverance.

But of one thing she never thought – of the cathedral of Courtland and the husband to whose face she had but once lifted her eyes.

The sun looked through between the red cloud bars. These he soon left behind, turning them from fiery islands to banks of fleecy wool. The shadows shot swiftly westward and then began slowly to shorten. In his chamber Prince Conrad rose and went to the window. A rose-coloured light lay along the sea horizon, darting between the dark pine stems and transmuting the bare sand-dunes into dreamy marvels, till they touched the heart like glimpses of a lost Eden seen in dreams. The black bird of night flapped its way behind the belting trees. There was not such a thing as a ghostly rat to gnaw unseen the heart of man. The blue dome of sky overhead was better than the holy shrine of Peter across the tawny flood of Tiber, and Isle Rugen more to be desired than the seven-hilled city itself. Yea, better than lifted chalice and wafted incense, Joan's hand in his —

And Conrad the lover turned from the window with a defiant heart.

At her casement, which opened to the east, stood at the same moment the young Duchess of Hohenstein. Her lips were parted and the mystery of the new day dwelt in her eyes like the memory of a benediction. Southward lay the world, striving, warring, sinning, repenting, elevating the Host, slaying the living, and burying the dead. But between her and that world stretched a wide water not to be crossed, a fixed gulf not to be passed over. It was the new day, and there beneath her was the strip of silver sand where he and she had walked yestereven, when the moon was full and the wavelets of that sheltered sea crisped in silver at their feet.

An hour afterwards these two met and gave each other a hand silently. Then, facing the sunrise, they walked eastward along the shore, while from the dusk of the garden gate Theresa von Lynar watched them with a sad smile upon her face.

"She is learning the lesson even as I learned it," she murmured, unconsciously thinking aloud. "Well, that which the father taught it is meet that the daughter should learn. Let her eat the fruit, the bitter fruit of love – even as I have eaten it!"

She watched a little longer, standing there with the pruning-knife in her hand. She saw Conrad turn towards Joan as they descended a little dell among the eastern sand-hills. And though she could not see, she knew that two hands met, and that they stood still for a moment, ere their feet climbed the opposite slope of dew-drenched sand. A swift sob took her unexpectedly by the throat.

"And yet," she said, "were all to do over, would not Theresa von Lynar again learn that lesson from Alpha to Omega, eat the Dead Sea fruit to its bitterest kernel, in order that once more the bud might open and love's flower be hers?"

Theresa von Lynar at her garden door spoke truth. For even then among the sand-hills the bud was opening, though the year was on the wane and the winter nigh.

"Happy Isle Rugen!" said Joan, drawing a breath like a sigh. "Why were we born to princedoms, Conrad, you and I?"

"I at least was not," answered her companion. "Dumb Max's jerkin of blue fits me better than any robe royal."

They stood on the highest part of the island. Joan was leaning on the crumbling wall of an ancient fort, which, being set on a promontory from which the pinetrees drew back a little, formed at once a place of observation and a point objective for their walks. She turned at his words and looked at him. Conrad, indeed, never looked better or more princely than in that rough jerkin of blue, together with the corded forester's breeches and knitted hose which he had borrowed from Theresa's dumb servitor.

"Conrad," said Joan, suddenly standing erect and looking directly at the young man, "if I were to tell you that I had resolved never to return to Kernsberg, but to remain here on Isle Rugen, what would you answer?"

"I should ask to be your companion – or, if not, your bailiff!" said the Prince-Bishop promptly.

"That would be to forget your holy office!"

A certain gentle sadness passed over the features of the young man.

"I leave many things undone for the sake of mine office," he said; "but the canons of the Church do not forbid poverty, or yet manual labour."

"But you have told me a hundred times," urged Joan, smiling in spite of herself, "that necessity and not choice made you a Churchman. Does that necessity no longer exist?"

"Nay," answered Conrad readily as before; "but smaller necessities yield to greater?"

"And the greater?"

"Why," he answered, "what say you to the tempest that drove me hither – the thews and stout hearts of Werner von Orseln and his men, not to speak of Captains Boris and Jorian there? Are they not sufficient reasons for my remaining here?"

He paused as if he had more to say.

"Well?" said Joan, and waited for him to continue.

"There is something else," he said. "It is – it is – that I cannot bear to leave you! God knows I could not leave you if I would!"

Joan of Hohenstein started. The words had been spoken in a low tone, yet with suppressed vehemence, as though driven from the young man's lips against his will. But there was no mistaking their purport. Yet they were spoken so hopelessly, and withal so gently, that she could not be angry.

"Conrad – Conrad," she murmured reproachfully, "I thought I could have trusted you. You promised never again to forget what we must both remember!"

"In so thinking you did well," he replied; "you may trust me to the end. But the privilege of speech and testimony is not denied even to the criminal upon the scaffold."

A wave of pity passed over Joan. A month before she would have withdrawn herself in hot anger. But Isle Rugen had gentled all her ways. The peace of that ancient fortalice, the wash of its ambient waters, the very lack of incident, the sense of the mysteries of tragic life which surrounded her on all sides, the deep thoughts she had been thinking alone with herself, the companionship of this man whom she loved – all these had wrought a new spirit in Joan of the Sword Hand. Women who cannot be pitiful are but half women. They have never yet entered upon their inheritance. But now Joan was coming to her own again. For to pity of Theresa von Lynar she was adding pity for Conrad of Courtland and – Joan of Hohenstein.

"Speak," she said very gently. "Do not be afraid; tell me all that is in your heart."

Joan was not disinclined to hear any words that the young man might speak. She believed that she could listen unmoved even to his most passionate declarations of love. Like the wise physician, she would listen, understand, prescribe – and administer the remedy.

But the pines of Isle Rugen stood between this woman and the girl who had ridden away so proudly from the doors of the Kernsberg minster at the head of her four hundred lances. Besides, she had not forgotten the tournament and the slim secretary who had once stood before this man in the river parlour of the Summer Palace.

Then Conrad spoke in a low voice, very distinct and even in its modulation.

"Joan," he said, "once on a time I dreamed of being loved – dreamed that among all the world of women there might be one woman for me. Such things must come when deep sleep falleth upon a young man. Waking I put them from me, even as I put arms and warfare aside. I believed that I had conquered the lust of the eye. Now I know that I can never again be true priest, never serve the altar with a clean heart.

"Listen, my Lady Joan! I love you – there is no use in hiding it. Doubtless you yourself have already seen it. I love you so greatly that vows, promises, priesthoods, cardinalates are no more to me than the crying of the seabirds out yonder. Let a worthier than I receive and hold them. They are not for a weak and sinful man. My bishopric let another take. I would rather be your groom, your servitor, your lacquey, than reign on the Seven Hills and sit in Holy Peter's chair!"

Joan leaned against the crumbling battlement, and the words of Conrad were very sweet in her ear. They filled her with pity, while at the same time her heart was strong within her. None had dared to speak such things to her before in all her life, and she was a woman. The Princess Margaret, had she loved a man as Joan did this man, would have given back vow for vow, renunciation for renunciation, and, it might be, have bartered kiss for kiss.

But Joan of the Sword Hand was never stronger, never more serene, never surer of herself than when she listened to the words she loved best to hear, from the lips of the man whom of all others she desired to speak them. At first she had been looking out upon the sea, but now she permitted her eyes to rest with a great kindliness upon the young man. Even as he spoke Conrad divined the thing that was in her heart.

"Mark you," he said, "do me the justice to remember that I ask for nothing. I expect nothing. I hope for nothing in return. I thought once that I could love Divine things wholly. Now I know that my heart is too earthly. But instead I love the noblest and most gracious woman in all the world. And I love her, too, with a love not wholly unworthy of her."

"You do me overmuch honour," said Joan quietly. "I, too, am weak and sinful. Or how else would I, your brother's wife, listen to such words from any man – least of all from you?"

"Nay," said Conrad; "you only listen out of your great pitifulness. But I am no worthy priest. I will not take upon me the yet greater things for which I am so manifestly unfitted. I will not sully the holy garments with my earthliness. Conrad of Courtland, Bishop and Cardinal, died out there among the breakers.

"He will never go to Rome, never kneel at the tombs of the Apostles. From this day forth he is a servitor, a servant of servants in the train of the Duchess Joan. Save those with us here, our hostess and the three captains (who for your sake will hold their peace), none know that Conrad of Courtland escaped the waters that swallowed up his companions. They and you will keep the secret. This shaven crown will speedily thatch itself again, a beard grow upon these shaveling cheeks. A dash of walnut juice, and who will guess that under the tan of Conrad the serf there is concealed a prince of Holy Church?"

He paused, almost smiling. The picture of his renunciation had grown real to him even as he spoke. But Joan did not smile. She waited a space to see if he had aught further to say. But he was silent, waiting for her answer.

"Conrad," she said very gently, "that I have listened to you, and that I have not been angry, may be deadly sin for us both. Yet I cannot be angry. God forgive me! I have tried and I cannot be angry. And why should I? Even as I lay a babe in the cradle, I was wedded. If a woman must suffer, she ought at least to be permitted to choose the instrument of her torture."

"It is verity," he replied; "you are no more true wife than I am true priest."

"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!"