he lonely road. But he smiled down at the little Prince.

"But she might have been, you know. It--it rather alarmed me."

Prince Ferdinand William Otto was for continuing the subject. He blamed
the accident on the new riding-suit, and was royally outspoken about it.
"And anyhow," he finished, "I don't like her in boy's clothes. Half of
her looks like a girl, and the rest doesn't."

Nikky, letting his eyes rest on her, realized that all of her to him was
wonderful, and forever beyond reach.

So that night he started out to think things over. Probably never before
in his life had he deliberately done such a thing. He had never, as a
fact, thought much at all. It had been his comfortable habit to let the
day take care of itself. Beyond minor problems of finance--minor because
his income was trifling--he had considered little. In the last border
war he had distinguished himself only when it was a matter of doing, not
of thinking.

He was very humble about himself. His young swagger was a sort
of defiance. And he was not subtle. Taken suddenly, through the
Chancellor's favor, into the circles of the Court, its intrigues and
poisoned whispers passed him by. He did not know they existed. And he
had one creed, and only one: to love God, honor the King, and live like
a gentleman.

On this boy, then, with the capacity for suffering of his single-minded
type, had fallen the mantle of trouble. It puzzled him. He did not
exactly know what to do about it. And it hurt. It hurt horribly.

That night, following the Archduchess's confidence, he had stood under
the Palace windows, in the Place, and looked up. Not that he expected to
see Hedwig. He did it instinctively, turning toward her hidden presence
with a sort of bewildered yearning. Across his path, as he turned away,
had passed the little procession of the priest and the Sacrament. He
knelt, as did the lovers and the passers-by, and when he got up he
followed the small flame of the lamp with his eyes as far as he could
see it.

This was life, then. One lived and suffered and yearned, and then came
death. Were there barriers of rank over there? Or were all equal, so
that those who had loved on earth without hope might meet face to face?
The tinkle of the bell grew fainter. This weight that he carried, it
would be his all his life. And then, one day, he too would hear the bell
coming nearer and nearer, and he would die, without having lived.

But he was young, and the night