ourtesy; as through a
myriad phantoms, where only she was real, he threaded his way to her
side.

"You are the stranger within our gates," she explained as in rhythmic
unison they drifted into the cadence of the waltz.

"Have I awakened," he inquired, "or is this part of the dream I had in
the Boulevard S. Michel?"

"It must have been a dream, monsieur," she said with sad finality. "It
is folly to encumber one's life with useless dreams."

"Your Grace wishes it?" he asked in halting syllables wrenched from a
heavy heart.

"For your own happiness, now," she answered with a meaning nod toward
the King.

"But," he pleaded, "it was such a beautiful dream."

"Dreams are--sometimes. Then we awake." He felt the slight tremor
against his arm as she spoke.

"I wish," he sighed impotently, "that you were an American girl."

She smiled mechanically to hide the sadness welling in her breast.
"Wishes," she murmured resignedly, "are too near akin to dreams for me
to indulge them. Besides I have a country to hope for. Why should I join
you in such a wish?"

"Have you, then, realized your wishes in His Majesty?" It was a brutal
thing to say; he saw it when too late to recall the words which had
passed his lips.

She shrank as if struck. Her eyes spoke the volumes of her appeal. They
read in his a hopeless prayer for forgiveness, and graciously, gently,
she pressed his arm under her hand as a sweet upward glance assured him
of absolution. Like the sigh in his own soul, sweet and low, the music
died out. The figure was finished.

Pleading fatigue, Carter sought the quarters assigned him in the castle.
His senses were awhirl, his spirits high in the chimera that Trusia
cared for him. Had he been compelled to remain in attendance he felt
certain that he would have bruited his glad tidings abroad. Between the
throbs of hope, however, with growing insistence threaded the stinging
pulses of despair and pity; despair that destiny would never give her to
him as wife, pity that she should sacrifice her own sweet self to a man
who had no real affection for her. Hers was a nature, he well knew,
requiring the full measure of tenderness to bloom in its fullest beauty.
Believing her beyond his reach he felt a sudden overpowering sense of
utter loneliness. Fully clad as he was, he flung himself upon his bed,
but his arm, his breast, still tingled with the contact from the dance.
Sleep held aloof from him. Darkness was no refuge from he