“Her Highness is ill?” he cried in suspense.
“Not the least bit in the world,” returned Clementina, whose voice for once in a way jarred upon Wogan’s ears. Nothing short of a positive sickness could justify the delay.
“What is it, then?” he asked curtly, almost roughly, of Mrs. Misset.
“You carried a packet for her Highness. It is left behind at the tavern.”
Wogan stamped impatiently on the ground.
“And for this, for a petticoat or two, you hinder us,” he cried in a heat. “There’s no petticoat in the world, though it were so stiff with gold that it stood on end of itself, that’s worth a single second of the next forty-eight hours.”
“But it contains her Highness’s jewels.”
Wogan’s impatience became an exasperation. Were all women at heart, then, no better than Indian squaws? A string of beads outweighed the sacrifices of friends and the chance of a crown! There was a blemish in his idol, since at all costs she must glitter. Wogan, however, was the master here.
“Her Highness must lose her jewels,” he said roughly, and was turning away when her Highness herself spoke.
“You are unjust, my friend,” she said. “I would lose them very willingly, were there a chance no one else would discover them. But there’s no chance. The woman of the tavern will find the bundle, will open it; very likely she has done so already. We shall have all Innspruck on our heels in half an hour;” and for the first time that night Wogan heard her voice break, and grieved to know that the tears were running down her cheeks. He called to O’Toole,—
“Ride back to the tavern! Bring the packet without fail!”
O’Toole galloped off, and Gaydon drove the carriage to the side of the road. There was nothing to do but to wait, and they waited in silence, counting up the chances. There could be no doubt that the landlady, if once she discovered the jewels hidden away in a common packet of clothing, must suspect the travellers who had left them behind. She would be terrified by their value; she would be afraid to retain them lest harm should come to her; and all Innspruck would be upon the fugitives’ heels. They waited for half an hour,—thirty minutes of gloom and despair. Clementina wept over this new danger which her comrades ran; Mrs. Misset wept for that her negligence was to blame; Gaydon sat on the box in the falling snow with his arms crossed upon his breast, and felt his head already loose upon his shoulders. The only one of the party who had any comfort of that half-hour was Wogan. For he had been wrong,—the chosen woman had no wish to glitter at all costs, though, to be sure, she could not help glittering with the refulgence of her great merits. His idol had no blemish. Wogan paced up and down the road, while he listened for O’Toole’s return, and that thought cheated the time for him. At last he heard very faintly the sound of galloping hoofs below him on the road. He ran back to Gaydon.
“It might be a courier to arrest us. If I shout, drive fast as you can to Nazareth, and from Nazareth to Italy.”
He hurried down the road and was hailed by O’Toole.
“I have it,” said he. Wogan turned and ran by O’Toole’s stirrup to the carriage.
“The landlady has a good conscience and sleeps well,” said O’Toole. “I found the house dark and the doors shut. They were only secured, however, by a wooden beam dropped into a couple of sockets on the inside.”
“But how did you open them?” asked Clementina.
“Your Highness, I have, after all, a pair of arms,” said O’Toole. “I just pressed on the doors till—”
“Till the sockets gave?”
“No, till the beam broke,” said he, and Clementina laughed.
“That’s my six foot four!” said she. O’Toole did not understand. But he smiled with great condescension and dignity, and continued his story.
“I groped my way up the stairs into the room and found the bundle untouched in the corner.”
He handed it to the Princess; Wogan sprang again onto the box, and Gaydon whipped up the horses. They reached the first posting stage at two, the second at four, the third at six, and at each they wasted no time. All that night their horses strained up the mountain road amid the whirling sleet. At times the wind roaring down a gorge would set the carriage rocking; at times they stuck fast in drifts; and Wogan and Gaydon must leap from the box and plunging waist-deep in the snow, must drag at the horses and push at the wheels. The pace was too slow; Wogan seemed to hear on every gust of wind the sound of a galloping company.
“We have lost twelve hours, more than twelve hours now,” he repeated and repeated to Gaydon. All the way to Ala they would still be in the Emperor’s territory. It needed only a single courier to gallop past them, and at either Roveredo or Trent they would infallibly be taken. Wogan fingered his pistols, straining his eyes backwards down the road.
At daybreak the snow stopped; the carriage rolled on high among the mountains under a grey sky; and here and there, at a wind of the road, Wogan caught a glimpse of the towers and chimney-tops of Innspruck, or had within his view a stretch of the slope they had climbed. But there was never a black speck visible upon the white of the snow; as yet no courier was overtaking them, as yet Innspruck did not know its captive had escaped. At eight o’clock in the morning they came to Nazareth, and found their own berlin ready harnessed at the post-house door, the postillion already in his saddle, and Misset waiting with an uncovered head.
“Her Highness will breakfast here, no doubt?” said Gaydon.
“Misset will have seen to it,” cried Wogan, “that the berlin is furnished. We can breakfast as we go.”
They waited no more than ten minutes at Nazareth. The order of travelling was now changed. Wogan and Gaydon now travelled in the berlin with Mrs. Misset and Clementina. Gaydon, being the oldest of the party, figured as the Count of Cernes, Mrs. Misset as his wife, Clementina as his niece, and Wogan as a friend of the family. O’Toole and Misset rode beside the carriage in the guise of servants. Thus they started from Nazareth, and had journeyed perhaps a mile when without so much as a moan Clementina swooned and fell forward into Wogan’s arms. Mrs. Misset uttered a cry; Wogan clasped the Princess to his breast. Her head fell back across his arm, pale as death; her eyes were closed; her bosom, strained against his, neither rose nor fell.
“She has fasted all Lent,” he said in a broken voice. “She has eaten nothing since we left Innspruck.”
Mrs. Misset burst into tears; she caught Clementina’s hand and clasped it; she had no eyes but for her. With Gaydon it was different. Wogan was holding the Princess in a clasp too loverlike, though, to be sure, it was none of his business.
“We must stop the carriage,” he said.
“No,” cried Wogan, desperately; “that we must not do;” and he caught her still closer to him. He had a fear that she was dying. Even so, she should not be recaptured. Though she were dead, he would still carry her dead body into Bologna and lay it white and still before his King. Europe from London to the Bosphorus should know the truth of her and ring with the wonder of her, though she were dead. O’Toole, attracted by the noise of Mrs. Misset’s lamentations, bent down over his horse’s neck and looked into the carriage.
“Her Highness is dead!” he cried.
“Drive on,” replied Wogan, through his clenched teeth.
Upon the other side of the carriage, Misset shouted through the window, “There is a spring by the roadside.”
“Drive on,” said Wogan.
Gaydon touched him on the arm.
“You will stifle her, man.”
Wogan woke to a comprehension of his attitude, and placed Clementina back on her seat. Mrs. Misset by good fortune had a small bottle of Carmelite water in her pocket; she held it to the Princess’s nostrils, who in a little opened her eyes and saw her companions in tears about her, imploring her to wake.
“It is nothing,” she said. “Take courage, my poor marmosets;” and with a smile she added, “There’s my six feet four with the tears in his eyes. Did ever a woman have such friends?”
The sun came out in the sky as she spoke. They had topped the pass and were now driving down towards Italy. There was snow about them still on the mountain-sides and deep in drifts upon the roads. The air was musical with the sound of innumerable freshets: they could be seen leaping and sparkling in the sunlight; the valleys below were green with the young green of spring, and the winds were tempered with the warmth of Italy. A like change came upon the fugitives. They laughed, where before they had wept; from under the seat they pulled out chickens which Misset had cooked with his own hands at Nazareth, bottles of the wine of St. Laurent, and bread; and Wogan allowed a halt long enough to get water from a spring by the roadside.
“There is no salt,” said Gaydon.
“Indeed there is,” replied Misset, indignant at the aspersion on his catering. “I have it in my tobacco-box.” He took his tobacco-box from his pocket and passed it into the carriage. Clementina made sandwiches and passed them out to the horsemen. The chickens turned out to be old cocks, impervious to the soundest tooth. No one minded except Misset, who had brought them. The jolts of the carriage became matter for a jest. They picnicked with the merriment of children, and finally O’Toole, to show his contempt for the Emperor, fired off both his loaded pistols in the air.
At that Wogan’s anxiety returned. He blazed up into anger. He thrust his head from the window.
“Is this your respect for her Highness?” he cried. “Is this your consideration?”
“Nay,” interposed Clementina, “you shall not chide my six feet four.”
“But he is mad, your Highness. I don’t say but what a trifle of madness is salt to a man; but O’Toole’s clean daft to be firing his pistols off to let the whole world know who we are. Here are we not six stages from Innspruck, and already we have lost twelve hours.”
“When?”
“Last night, before we left Innspruck, between the time when you escaped from the villa and when I joined you in the avenue. I climbed out of the window to descend as I had entered, but the sentinel had returned. I waited on the window-ledge crouched against the wall until he should show me his back. After five minutes or so he did. He stamped on the snow and marched up the lane. I let myself down and hung by my hands, but he turned on his beat before I could drop. He marched back; I clung to the ledge, thinking that in the darkness he would pass on beneath me and never notice. He did not notice; but my fingers were frozen and numbed with the cold. I felt them slipping; I could cling no longer, and I fell. Luckily I fell just as he passed beneath me; I dropped feet foremost upon his shoulders, and he went down without a cry. I left him lying stunned there on the snow; but he will be found, or he will recover. Either way our escape will be discovered, and no later than this morning. Nay, it must already have been discovered. Already Innspruck’s bells are ringing the alarm; already the pursuit is begun—” and he leaned his head from the window and cried, “Faster! faster!” O’Toole, for his part, shouted, “Trinkgeldt!” It was the only word of German which he knew. “But,” said he, “there was a Saracen lady I learned about at school who travelled over Europe and found her lover in an alehouse in London, with no word but his name to help her over the road. Sure, it would be a strange thing if I couldn’t travel all over Germany with the help of ‘Trinkgeldt.’”
The word certainly had its efficacy with the postillion. “Trinkgeldt!” cried O’Toole, and the berlin rocked and lurched and leaped down the pass. The snow was now less deep, the drifts fewer. The road wound along a mountain-side: at one window rose the rock; from the other the travellers looked down hundreds of feet to the bed of the valley and the boiling torrent of the Adige. It was a mere narrow ribbon of a road made by the Romans, without a thought for the convenience of travellers in a later day; and as the carriage turned a corner, O’Toole, mounted on his horse, saw ahead a heavy cart crawling up towards them. The carter saw the berlin thundering down towards him behind its four maddened horses, and he drew his cart to the inside of the road against the rock. The postillion tugged at his reins; he had not sufficient interval of space to check his team; he threw a despairing glance at O’Toole. It seemed impossible the berlin could pass. There was no use to cry out; O’Toole fell behind the carriage with his mind made up. He looked down the precipice; he saw in his imagination the huge carriage with its tangled, struggling horses falling sheer into the foam of the river. He could not ride back to Bologna with that story to tell; he and his horse must take the same quick, steep road.
The postillion drove so close to the cart that he touched it as he passed. “We are lost!” he shouted in an agony; and O’Toole saw the hind wheel of the berlin slip off the road and revolve for the fraction of a second in the air. He was already putting his horse at the precipice as though it was a ditch to be jumped, when the berlin made, to his astonished eyes, an effort to recover its balance like a live thing. It seemed to spring sideways from the brink of the precipice. It not only seemed, it did spring; and O’Toole, drawing rein, in the great revulsion of his feelings, saw, as he rocked unsteadily in his saddle, the carriage tearing safe and unhurt down the very centre of the road.
O’Toole set his spurs to his horse and galloped after it. The postillion looked back and laughed.
“Trinkgeldt!” he cried.
O’Toole swore loudly, and getting level beat him with his whip. Wogan’s head popped out of the window.
“Silence!” said he in a rage. “Mademoiselle is asleep;” and then seeing O’Toole’s white and disordered face he asked, “What is it?” No one in the coach had had a suspicion of their danger. But O’Toole still saw before his eyes that wheel slip over the precipice and revolve in air, he still felt his horse beneath him quiver and refuse this leap into air. In broken tones he gasped out his story to Wogan, and as he spoke the Princess stirred.
“Hush!” said Wogan; “she need not know. Ride behind, O’Toole! Your blue eyes are green with terror. Your face will tell the story, if once she sees it.”
O’Toole fell back again behind the carriage, and at four that afternoon they stopped before the post-house at Brixen. They had crossed the Brenner in a storm of snow and howling winds; they had travelled ten leagues from Innspruck. Wogan called a halt of half an hour. The Princess had eaten barely a mouthful since her supper of the night before. Wogan forced her to alight, forced her to eat a couple of eggs, and to drink a glass of wine. Before the half-hour had passed, she was anxious to start again.
From Brixen the road was easier; and either from the smoothness of the travelling or through some partial relief from his anxieties, Wogan, who had kept awake so long, suddenly fell fast asleep, and when he woke up again the night was come. He woke up without a start or even a movement, as was his habit, and sat silently and bitterly reproaching himself for that he had yielded to fatigue. It was pitch-dark within the carriage; he stared through the window and saw dimly the moving mountain-side, and here and there a clump of trees rush past. The steady breathing of Gaydon, on his left, and of Mrs. Misset in the corner opposite to Gaydon, showed that those two guardians slept as well. His reproaches became more bitter and then suddenly ceased, for over against him in the darkness a young, fresh voice was singing very sweetly and very low. It was the Princess Clementina, and she sang to herself, thinking all three of her companions were asleep. Wogan had not caught the sound at first above the clatter of the wheels, and even now that he listened it came intermittently to his ears. He heard enough, however, to know and to rejoice that there was no melancholy in the music. The song had the clear bright thrill of the blackbird’s note in June. Wogan listened, entranced. He would have given worlds to have written the song with which Clementina solaced herself in the darkness, to have composed the melody on which her voice rose and sank.
The carriage drew up at an inn; the horses were changed; the flight was resumed. Wogan had not moved during this delay, neither had Misset nor O’Toole come to the door. But an ostler had flashed a lantern into the berlin, and for a second the light had fallen upon Wogan’s face and open eyes. Clementina, however, did not cease; she sang on until the lights had been left behind and the darkness was about them. Then she stopped and said,—
“How long is it since you woke?”
Wogan was taken by surprise.
“I should never have slept at all,” stammered he. “I promised myself that. Not a wink of sleep betwixt Innspruck and Italy; and here was I fast as a log this side of Trent. I think our postillion sleeps too;” and letting down the window he quietly called Misset.
“We have fresh relays,” said he, “and we travel at a snail’s-pace.”
“The relays are only fresh to us,” returned Misset. “We can go no faster. There is someone ahead with three stages’ start of us,—someone of importance, it would seem, and who travels with a retinue, for he takes all the horses at each stage.”
Wogan thrust his head out of the window. There was no doubt of it; the horses lagged. In this hurried flight the most trifling hindrance was a monumental danger, and this was no trifling hindrance. For the hue and cry was most certainly raised behind them; the pursuit from Innspruck had begun twelve hours since, on the most favourable reckoning. At any moment they might hear the jingle of a horse’s harness on the road behind. And now here was a man with a great retinue blocking their way in front.
“We can do no more, but make a fight of it in the end,” said he. “They may be few who follow us. But who is he ahead?”
Misset did not know.
“I can tell you,” said Clementina, with a slight hesitation. “It is the Prince of Baden, and he travels to Italy.”
Wogan remembered a certain letter which his King had written to him from Rome; and the hesitation in the girl’s voice told him the rest of the story. Wogan would have given much to have had his fingers about the scruff of that pompous gentleman’s neck with the precipice handy at his feet. It was intolerable that the fellow should pester the Princess in prison and hinder her flight when she had escaped from it.
“Well, we can do no more,” said he, and he drew up the window. Neither Gaydon nor Mrs. Misset were awakened; Clementina and Wogan were alone in the darkness.
She leaned forward to him and said in a low voice,—
“Tell me of the King. I shall make mistakes in this new world. Will he have patience with me while I learn?”
She had spoken upon the same strain in the darkness of the staircase only the night before. Wogan gently laughed her fears aside.
“I will tell you the truest thing about the King. He needs you at his side. For all his friends, he is at heart a lonely man, throned upon sorrows. I dare to tell you that, knowing you. He needs not a mere wife, but a mate, a helpmate, to strive with him, her hand in his. Every man needs the helpmate, as I read the world. For it cannot but be that a man falls below himself when he comes home always to an empty room.”
The Princess was silent. Wogan hoped that he had reassured her. But her thoughts were now turned from herself. She leaned yet further forward with her elbows upon her knees, and in a yet lower voice she asked a question which fairly startled him.
“Does she not love you?”
Wogan, indeed, had spoken unconsciously, with a deep note of sadness in his voice, which had sounded all the more strange and sad to her from its contrast with the quick, cheerful, vigorous tones she had come to think the mark of him. He had spoken as though he looked forward with a poignant regret through a weary span of days, and saw himself always in youth and middle years and age coming home always to an empty room. Therefore she put her question, and Wogan was taken off his guard.
“There is no one,” he said in a flurry.
Clementina shook her head.
“I wish that I may hear the King speak so, and in that voice; I shall be very sure he loves me,” she said in a musing voice, and so changing almost to a note of raillery. “Tell me her name!” she pleaded. “What is amiss with her that she is not thankful for a true man’s love like yours? Is she haughty? I’ll bring her on her knees to you. Does she think her birth sets her too high in the world? I’ll show her so much contempt, you so much courtesy, that she shall fall from her arrogance and dote upon your steps. Perhaps she is too sure of your devotion? Why, then, I’ll make her jealous!”
Wogan interrupted her, and the agitation of his voice put an end to her raillery. Somehow she had wounded him who had done so much for her.
“Madam, I beg you to believe me, there is no one;” and casting about for a sure argument to dispel her conjectures, he said on an impulse, “Listen; I will make your Highness a confidence.” He stopped, to make sure that Gaydon and Mrs. Misset were still asleep. Then he laughed uneasily like a man that is half-ashamed and resumed,—“I am lord and king of a city of dreams. Here’s the opening of a fairy tale, you will say. But when I am asleep my city’s very real; and even now that I am awake I could draw you a map of it, though I could not name its streets. That’s my town’s one blemish. Its streets are nameless. It has taken a long while in the building, ever since my boyhood; and indeed the work’s not finished yet, nor do I think it ever will be finished till I die, since my brain’s its architect. When I was asleep but now, I discovered a new villa, and an avenue of trees, and a tavern with red blinds which I had never remarked before. At the first there was nothing but a queer white house of which the original has fallen to ruins at Rathcoffey in Ireland. This house stood alone in a wide flat emerald plain that stretched like an untravelled sea to a circle of curving sky. There was room to build, you see, and when I left Rathcoffey and became a wanderer, the building went on apace. There are dark lanes there from Avignon between great frowning houses, narrow climbing streets from Meran, arcades from Verona, and a park of many thickets and tall poplar-trees with a long silver stretch of water. One day you will see that park from the windows of St. James. It has a wall too, my city,—a round wall enclosing it within a perfect circle; and from whatever quarter of the plain you come towards it, you only see this wall, there’s not so much as a chimney visible above it. Once you have crowded with the caravans and traders through the gates,—for my town is busy,—you are at once in the ringing streets. I think my architect in that took Aigues Mortes for his model. Outside you have the flat, silent plain, across which the merchants creep in long trailing lines, within the noise of markets, the tramp of horses’ hoofs, the talk of men and women, and, if you listen hard, the whispers, too, of lovers. Oh, my city’s populous! There are quiet alleys with windows opening onto them, where on summer nights you may see a young girl’s face with the moonlight on it like a glory, and in the shadow of the wall beneath, the cloaked figure of a youth. Well, I have a notion—” and then he broke off abruptly. “There’s a black horse I own, my favourite horse.”
“You rode it the first time you came to Ohlau,” said the Princess.
“Do you indeed remember that?” cried Wogan, with so much pleasure that Gaydon stirred in his corner, and Clementina said, “Hush!”
Wogan waited in a suspense lest Gaydon should wake up, which, to be sure, would be the most inconsiderate thing in the world. Gaydon, however, settled himself more comfortably, and in a little his regular breathing might be heard again.
“Well,” resumed Wogan, “I have a notion that the lady I shall marry will come riding some sunrise on my black horse across the plain and into my city of dreams. And she has not.”
“Ah,” said Clementina, “here’s a subterfuge, my friend. The lady you shall marry, you say. But tell me this! Has the lady you love ridden on your black horse into your city of dreams?”
“No,” said Wogan; “for there is no lady whom I love.” There Wogan should have ended, but he added rather sadly, “Nor is there like to be.”
“Then I am sure,” said Clementina.
“Sure that I speak truth?”
“No, sure that you mislead me. It is not kind; for here perhaps I might give you some small token of my gratitude, would you but let me. Oh, it is no matter. I shall find out who the lady is. You need not doubt it. I shall set my wits and eyes to work. There shall be marriages when I am Queen. I will find out!”
Wogan’s face was not visible in the darkness; but he spoke quickly and in a startled voice,—
“That you must never do. Promise that you never will! Promise me that you will never try;” and again Gaydon stirred in his corner.
Clementina made no answer to the passionate words. She did not promise, but she drew a breath, and then from head to foot she shivered. Wogan dared not repeat his plea for a promise, but he felt that though she had not given it, none the less she would keep it. They sat for awhile silent. Then Clementina came back to her first question.
“Tell me of the King,” she said very softly. And as the carriage rolled down the mountain valley through the night and its wheels struck flashes of fire from the stones, Wogan drew a picture for her of the man she was to marry. It was a relief to him to escape from the dangerous talk of the last hour, and he spoke fervently. The poet in him had always been sensitive to the glamour of that wandering Prince; he had his countrymen’s instinctive devotion for a failing cause. This was no suitable moment for dwelling upon the defects and weaknesses. Wogan told her the story of the campaign in Scotland, of the year’s residence in Avignon. He spoke most burningly. A girl would no doubt like to hear of her love’s achievements; and if James Stuart had not so many to his name as a man could wish, that was merely because chance had served him ill. So a fair tale was told, not to be found in any history book, of a night attack in Scotland and how the Chevalier de St. George, surprised and already to all purposes a prisoner, forced a way alone through nine grenadiers with loaded muskets and escaped over the roof-tops. It was a good breathless story as he told it, and he had just come to an end of it when the carriage drove through the village of Wellishmile and stopped at the posting-house. Wogan opened the door and shook Gaydon by the shoulder.
“Let us try if we can get stronger horses here,” said he, and he got out. Gaydon woke up with surprising alacrity.
“I must have fallen asleep,” said he. “I beseech your Highness’s forgiveness; I have slept this long while.” It was no business of his if Wogan chose to attribute his own escape from Newgate as an exploit of the King’s. The story was a familiar one at Bologna, whither they were hurrying; it was sufficiently known that Charles Wogan was its hero. All this was Wogan’s business, not Gaydon’s. Nor had Gaydon anything to do with any city of dreams or with any lady that might ride into it, or with any black horse that chanced to carry her. Poets no doubt talked that way. It was their business. Gaydon was not sorry that he had slept so heartily through those last stages. He got down from the carriage and met Wogan coming from the inn with a face of dismay.
“We are stopped here. There is no help for it. We have gained on the Prince of Baden, who is no more than two stages ahead. The relays which carried him from here to the next stage have only this instant come back. They are too tired to move. So we must stay until they are refreshed. And we are still three posts this side of Trent!” he cried. “I would not mind were Trent behind us. But there’s no help for it. I have hired a room where the Countess and her niece can sleep until such time as we can start.”
Clementina and Mrs. Misset descended and supped in company with Gaydon and Wogan, while Misset and O’Toole waited upon them as servants. It was a silent sort of supper, very different from the meal they had made that morning. For though the fare was better, it lacked the exhilaration. This delay weighed heavily upon them all. For the country was now for a sure thing raised behind them, and if they had gained on the Prince of Baden, their pursuers had no less certainly gained on them.
“Would we were t’other side of Trent!” exclaimed Wogan; and looking up he saw that Clementina was watching him with a strange intentness. Her eyes were on him again while they sat at supper; and when he led her to the door of her room and she gave him her hand, she stood for a little while looking deep into his eyes. And though she had much need of sleep, when she had got into the room and the door was closed behind her, she remained staring at the logs of the fire.
For she knew his secret, and to her eyes he was now another man. Before, Wogan was the untiring servant, the unflinching friend; now he was the man who loved her. The risks he had run, his journeyings, his unswerving confidence in the result, his laborious days and nights of preparation, and the swift execution,—love as well as service claimed a share in these. He was changed for ever to her eyes; she knew his secret. There was the cloud no bigger than a man’s hand. For she must needs think over all that he had said and done by the new light the secret shed. When did he first begin to care? Why? She recalled his first visit long ago to Ohlau, when he rode across the park on his black horse charged with his momentous errand. She had been standing, she remembered, before the blazing log-fire in the great stone hall, much as she was standing now. Great changes had come since then. She was James Stuart’s chosen wife—and this man loved her. He had no hope of any reward; he desired even that she should not know. She should no doubt have been properly sorry and compassionate, but she was a girl simple and frank. To be loved by a man who could so endure and strive and ask no guerdon,—that lifted her. She thought the more worthily of herself because he loved her. She was raised thereby. She could not be sorry; her blood pulsed, her heart sang, the starry eyes shone with a brighter light. He loved her. She knew his secret. A little clock chimed the hour upon the mantel-shelf, and lifting her eyes she saw that just twenty-four hours had passed since she had driven out of Innspruck up the Brenner.
As she got into bed a horse galloped up to the inn and stopped. She remembered that she had not ridden on his black horse out of the sunrise across the plain. He loved her, and since he loved her, surely—She fell asleep puzzled and wondering why. She was waked up some two hours afterwards by a rapping on the door, and she grew hot and she recognised Wogan’s voice cautiously whispering to her to rise with all speed. For in her dreams from which she had wakened, she had ridden across the flat green plain into the round city of dreams.