aid her. She saw the situation clearly, and, trusting Max
implicitly, felt safe in giving rein to her heart. She did not care to
hide from him its true condition. On the contrary she wished him to be
as sure of her as she was of him, for after all that would be the only
satisfaction they would ever know.

I argued: If Yolanda were the princess, betrothed to the Dauphin, the
gulf between her and Max was as impassable as if she were a burgher
girl. In neither case could she hope to marry him. Therefore, her
girlish wooing was but the outcry of nature and was without boldness.

The paramount instinct of all nature is to flower. Even the frozen
Alpine rock sends forth its edelweiss, and the heart of a princess is
first the heart of a woman, and must blossom when its spring comes. All
the conventions that man can invent will not keep back the flower. All
created things, animate and inanimate, have in them an uncontrollable
impulse which, in their spring, reverts with a holy retrospect to the
great first principle of existence, the love of reproduction.

Yolanda's spring had come, and her heart was a flower with the sacred
bloom. Being a woman, she loved it and cuddled it for the sake of the
pain it brought, as a mother fondles a wayward child. Max, being a man,
struggled against the joy that hurt him and, with a sympathy broad
enough for two, feared the pain he might bring to Yolanda. So this
unresponsiveness in Max made him doubly attractive to the girl, who was
of the sort, whether royal or bourgeois, before whom men usually fall.

"I thought you had left me, Sir Max," she said, drawing him to a seat
beside her in the shade.

"I promised you I would not go," he responded, "and I would not
willingly break my word to any one, certainly not to you, Fraeulein."

"I was angry when I heard you had left the inn," she said, "and I spoke
unkindly of you. There has been an ache in my heart ever since that
nothing but confession and remission will cure."

"I grant the remission gladly," answered Max. "There was flattery in
your anger."

The girl laughed softly and, clasping her hands over her knee, spoke
with a sigh.

"I think women have the harder part of life in everything. I again ask
you to promise me that you will not leave Peronne within a month."

"I cannot promise you that, Fraeulein," answered Max.

"You will some day--soon, perhaps--know my reasons," said Yolanda, "and
if they do not prove good I am willing to f