s below, for a messenger had just galloped
in with news from the front, and a sad procession of ambulance wagons
had arrived for the hospital. Only it seemed to them both that that
other day, of which both for a moment thought, lay far back in some
uncertain past. Events had marched so rapidly during the last few
months that all sense of proportion and distance was lost. They looked
at one another with white, haggard faces. Marie saw that her brother
no longer wore his sword.

"What has happened?" she asked, faintly.

The fires of hell were smouldering in his dark eyes. Yet he answered
with some attempt at calmness.

"I challenged him. I had the right! He did not deny it, but he will
not fight until the war is over. I have broken my sword. I am an
outcast from my people--and he is still their king. Marie, you have
brought great trouble upon our House."

"It was not I who brought him here," she answered. "I was against it
always. The trouble is of your making--and his. He drank with me from
the King's cup."

"Ay! And to-night he refused absolutely to marry you, Marie. I
suffered the everlasting humiliation of offering your hand--to have it
refused."

She drew a short, quick breath. It was humiliation indeed. A sudden
wild anger seized her. She locked and interlocked her fingers
nervously.

"They are an accursed race, these men of Tyrnaus," she cried. "They
make vows only to break them. Their honour is a broken reed."

Then Nicholas, his face gleaming white through the darkness, leaned
over to her.

"Marie," he said, "those written words--which summoned you to
him--were his?"

She hesitated. He raised his hand.

"Marie," he said, solemnly, "answer me as though your foot were upon
the threshold of eternity. Remember that the name of Reist will become
a name of shame for ever if you speak falsely. He is young, and he
came here a stranger to us and our traditions. With our country in
peril I might forgive for the while his broken troth--if that were
all. But if he has dared to hold you lightly--that I cannot forgive.
Tell me the truth! Was that message, indeed, from him which summoned
you to a clandestine meeting?"

She met his fixed gaze with beating heart. Her bosom rose and fell
quickly. She was torn with a hundred emotions. At last she answered.

"Nicholas," she said, "I know nothing of that note. I sought the king
of my own free will."

Reist paced the room with quick, uneven footsteps. Marie sat at