ot; for this castle has everywhere eyes and ears, and
everywhere are spies and listeners behind the tapestry; behind the
curtains; everywhere are they concealed and lurking, watching every
feature, every smile, every word, whether it may not afford ground for
suspicion. No, no, Henry; swear to me by our love that you will never,
unless here in this room, address me otherwise than your queen. Swear
to me that, beyond these walls, you will be to me only the respectful
servant of your queen, and at the same time the proud earl and lord,
of whom it is said that never has a woman been able to touch his heart.
Swear to me that you will not, by a look, by a smile, by even the
gentlest pressure of the hand, betray what beyond this room is a crime
for both of us. Let this room be the temple of our love; but when we
once pass its threshold, we will not profane the sweet mysteries of our
happiness, by allowing unholy eyes to behold even a single ray of it.
Shall it be so, my Henry?

"Yes, it shall be so!" said he, with a troubled voice; "although I must
confess that this dreadful illusion often tortures me almost to death.
Oh, Geraldine, when I meet you elsewhere, when I observe the eye so icy
and immovable, with which you meet my look, I feel as it were my heart
convulsed; and I say to myself: 'This is not she, whom I love--not the
tender, passionate woman, whom in the darkness of the night I sometimes
lock in my arms. This is Catharine, the queen, but not my loved one. A
woman cannot so disguise herself; art goes not so far as to falsify the
entire nature, the innermost being and life of a person.' Oh, there have
been hours, awful, horrible hours, when it seemed to me as though all
this were a delusion, a mystification--as though in some way an evil
demon assumed the queen's form by night to mock me, poor frenzied
visionary, with a happiness that has no existence, but lives only in my
imagination. When such thoughts come to me, I feel a frenzied fury, a
crushing despair, and I could, regardless of my oath and even the danger
that threatens you, rush to you, and, before all the courtly rabble and
the king himself, ask: 'Are you really what you seem? Are you, Catharine
Parr, King Henry's wife--nothing more, nothing else than that? Or are
you, my beloved, the woman who is mine in her every thought, her every
breath; who has vowed to me eternal love and unchanging truth; and whom
I, in spite of the whole world, and the king, press to