ink an imperial cup of bitterness to the dregs. She
remembered that she herself had suffered, so often and so violently, for
love, passionate woman that she was; she understood that his suffering
was different from hers, but doubtless more terrible, as it seized him
already at so young an age and as it depended not upon his own single
soul, but upon the millions of souls of his empire. She too had suffered
because she had not been loved; he also suffered like that. And so in
one instant she understood him quite entirely, with all her strange
woman's heart.

A thrill of compassion welled up in her breast as a yet unknown delight
and, like a fervent, gentle oracle, she uttered the words:

"They do not all hate you...."

He recognized her passionate glances of the day before. He remembered
her kiss. He looked at her long, still hesitating a little in the
presence of the unknown. Then he extended his arms and, with a dull cry
of despair, hoarse with hunger for consolation, he called to her in his
helplessness:

"Oh, Alexa!..."

She first smiled, with radiant eyes, then flung herself bodily into his
young arms, crushing him against her bare breast. She felt like a maid
and a mother in one. But, when he clung to her in a wild passion of
despair, she felt herself to be nothing but a lover. She knew that he
would be her last love. The knowledge made her proudly sad and
diabolically happy. Her kisses clattered upon his eyes like hail....

And in their love, that night, they mingled the wormwood of what they
both were suffering, each seeking consolation for life's sorrows in the
other....

9

"To HIS IMPERIAL HIGHNESS THE DUKE OF XARA,
"LYCILIA.

"THE IMPERIAL,
"LIPARA,
"--_April_, 18--.

"MY DEAR BROTHER,

"I want to tell you before you read it in those tedious papers that our
respected father and emperor this morning, on my tenth birthday, dubbed
me a knight of St. Ladislas in the knights' hall of the palace. You can
understand how proud I feel. I shall not tell you about the ceremony,
because you will remember that yourself. I was very much impressed as I
walked up to our father between all those tall knights in their blue
mantles and knelt before his throne. I wore my new uniform of a
lieutenant in the guards. The king-at-arms, the Marquis of Ezzera, held
up the rule of the order on a cu