ious, wistful eyes.

'You are to go with me,' he answered quietly, 'wherever I go, to my
death, or to yours.'

'Oh,' she exclaimed, 'how happy I am! At last at last, I _am_ happy!'

She was clinging around his neck. He gently, tenderly, lifted her arms
from him, and held her a little apart, and looked at her with a proud
affection and a love before which her eyes drooped. She was overborne by
the rush of her own too great happiness. What did she care whether they
succeeded or failed in their enterprise on Gloria? What did she care
about being the Dictatress, if there be any such word, of Gloria? Alas!
what did she care in that proud, selfish moment for the future and the
prosperity of Gloria? She was only thinking that _he_ loved her, and
that she was to be allowed to go with him to the very last, that she was
to be allowed to die with him. For she had not at that moment the
faintest hope or thought of being allowed to live with him. Her horizon
was much more limited. She could only think that they would go out to
Gloria and get killed there, together. But was not that enough? They
would be killed together. What better could she ask or hope? Youth is
curiously generous with its life-blood. It delights to think of throwing
life away, not merely for some beloved being, but even with some beloved
being. As time goes on and the span of life shrinks, the seeming value
of life swells, and the old man is content to outlive his old wife, the
old wife to outlive the husband of her youth.

'You are fit to be an empress!' the Dictator exclaimed, and he pressed
her again to his heart. He did not overrate her courage and her
devotion, but, being a man, he a little--just a little--misunderstood
her. She was not thinking of empire, she was thinking of _him_. She was
not thinking of sharing power with him. Her heart was swollen with joy
at the thought that she was to be allowed to share danger and death with
him. It is not easy for a daring, ambitious man to enter into such
thoughts. They are the property, and the copyright, and the birthright
of woman.

But Helena was pleased and proud indeed that he had called her fit to be
an empress. Fit to be _his_ empress: what praise beyond that could human
voice give to her? Her face flushed crimson with delight and pride, and
she stood on tiptoe up to him and kissed him.

Then she started away, for the door of the conservatory opened. But she
returned to him again.

'See!' Helena excla