evening, when she would recall our earlier meetings, our
glances exchanged, our thoughts of one another, and lead me to talk of
my boyhood. These things did not appeal only to the intellect of a youth
of eighteen or nineteen when they proceeded from the lips of a beautiful
and brilliant woman of twenty-eight.

I approach a very common occurrence; but in my case its progress and
result were specially modified and conditioned. There was the political
aspect, looming large to the alarmed Right; there was the struggle for
more intimate influence over me, in which my mother fought with a grim
intensity; in my own mind there was always the curious dim presence of
an inexorable fate that wore the incongruous mask of Elsa's baby face.
All these were present to me in their full force during the earlier
period of my friendship with the Countess, when I was still concealing
from myself as well as from her and all the world that I could ever
desire to have more than friendship. The first stages past, there came a
time when the secret was still kept from all save myself, but when I
knew it with an exultation not to be conquered, with a dread and a shame
that tormented while they could not prevail. But I went more and more to
her house. I had no evil intent; nay, I had no intent at all in my
going; I could not keep away. She alone had come to satisfy me; with her
alone, all of me--thoughts, feelings, eyes, and ears--seemed to find
some cause for exercise and a worthy employment of their life. The other
presences in my mind grew fainter and intermittent in their visits; I
gave myself up to the stream and floated down the current. Yet I was
never altogether forgetful nor blind to what I did; I knew the
transformation that had come over my friendship; to myself now I could
not but call it love; I knew that others in the palace, in the
chancellery, in drawing-rooms, in newspaper offices, ay, perhaps even in
the very street, called it now, not the king's friendship nor the king's
love, but the king's infatuation. Not even then could I lose altogether
the external view of myself.

We were sitting by the fire one evening in the twilight; she was playing
with a hand-screen, but suffering the flames to paint her face and throw
into relief the sensitive merry lips and the eyes so full of varied
meanings. She had told me to go, and I had not gone; she leaned back
and, after one glance of reproof, fixed her regard on the polished tip
of her sh