mory
all his life long.

With a breaking heart he took leave of her: farewell, farewell! It was
all over: his proud career, his life, his all. He begged her to forgive
him. He knew that he was too weak to love her against the will of his
sovereign. And for that he begged her to forgive him. She would hear a
woman's name mentioned in connection with his own: for this also he
begged her pardon. He did not love that woman, but she was willing to
console him in his grief....

The wind had suddenly increased in violence, with heavy, regular blasts.
The sky was dark overhead. The waves rolled more wildly against the boat
and swung it up on their backs as it were on the backs of sleek
sea-monsters. The spray had wetted Valerie. She looked round.
Altseeborgen lay very far away, scarcely within sight; she could just
see the flag defined against the sky like a tiny ribbon.

"I must be mad," she thought. "Where am I going to?... I must turn
back...."

But it was difficult to bring the boat round. Each time the wind beat it
off again and drove it farther. Despair came upon Valerie, body and
soul, moral and physical despair.

"Well, let it be," she thought.

She let the sculls drop, drifted farther away, away. And why not? Why
should she not let herself drift away? Without him, without him ... she
could not live! Her happiness was ruined; what was life without
happiness? For she wanted happiness, it was essential to her....

She sat half-huddled in the boat. The sculls flapped against the sides.
A wave broke over her. Her eyes stared burning before her, into the
distance.

A second wave broke; her feet were wet through. She slowly drew herself
up, looked at the angry sea, at the lowering sky. Then she grasped the
sculls again, with a sigh of pain:

"Come on!" she thought.

She rose higher and sank lower. But with a frantic effort she made the
boat turn:

"It _shall!_" she bit out between her teeth. She kept the boat's head to
the wind and began to row. It _shall_. She wrinkled her forehead,
gnashed her jaws, grated her teeth together. She felt her muscles
straining. And she rowed on, up against the wind. With her whole body
she struggled up against the stiff breeze. It _shall_. It _must_. And
she grew accustomed to the exertion; she rowed on mechanically. So much
accustomed did she grow to it that she began to sob as she rowed....

O God, how she had loved him, with all her soul! Why? Could she tell?
Oh, if he had o