I have great influence with you.'

'Of course, you know you have.'

'Yes--but there was more.'

'What more?' She turned her head away.

'He is under the impression that you would do anything I asked you to
do.'

'So I would, and so I will!' she exclaimed impetuously. 'If you ask me
to marry Mr. Hamilton I will marry him! Yes--I _will_. If you, knowing
what you do know, can wish your friend to marry me, and me to become his
wife, I will accept his condescending offer! You know I do not love
him--you know I never felt one moment's feeling of that kind for
him--you know that I like him as I like twenty other young men--and not
a bit more. You know this--at all events, you know it now when I tell
you--and will you ask me to marry Mr. Hamilton now?'

'But is this all true? Is this really how you feel to him?'

'Zwischen uns sei Wahrheit,' Helena said scornfully. 'Why should I
deceive you? If I loved Mr. Hamilton I could marry him, couldn't
I?--seeing that he has sent you to ask me? I do not love him--I never
could love him in that way. Now what do you ask me to do?'

'I am sorry for my poor young friend and comrade,' the Dictator answered
sadly. 'I thought, perhaps, he might have had some reason to
believe----'

'Did he tell you anything of the kind?'

'Oh, no, no; he is the last man in the world to say such a thing, or
even to think it. One reason why he wished me to open the matter to you
was that he feared, if he spoke to you about it himself, you would only
laugh at him and refuse to give him a serious answer. He thought you
would give me a serious answer.'

'What a very extraordinary and eccentric young man!'

'Indeed, he is nothing of the kind--although, of course, like myself, he
has lived a good deal outside the currents of English feeling.'

'I should have thought,' she said gravely, 'that that was rather a
question of the currents of common human feeling. Do the young women in
Gloria like to be made love to by delegation?'

'Would it have made any difference if he had come himself?'

'No difference in the world--now or at any other time. But remember, I
am a very loyal subject, and I admit the right of my king to hand me
over in marriage. If you tell me to marry Mr. Hamilton, I will.'

'You are only jesting, Miss Langley, and this is not a jest.'

'I don't feel much in the mood for jesting,' she answered. 'It would
rather seem as if I had been made the subject of a jest----'

'Oh, you must no