he equerries, the ladies-in-waiting; they smiled to
the betrothed imperial couple, who stood in one of the open
window-recesses to let them pass.

They remained alone in the gallery, before the open window:

"I need air," said Valerie, with a sigh.

He made no reply. They stood together in silence, gazing at the evening
landscape. He was wearing the uhlan uniform of the Austrian regiment
which he commanded; and a new order glittered amongst the others on his
breast: the Golden Fleece of Austria. She seemed to have grown older
than she was at Altseeborgen, in her pink-silk evening-dress, with wide,
puffed sleeves of very pale-green velvet, a tight-curled border of white
ostrich-feathers edging the low-cut bodice and the train.

"Shall I leave you alone for a little, Valerie?" he asked, gently.

She shook her head, smiling sadly. Her bosom seemed to heave with
uncontrollable emotion.

"Why, Othomar?" she asked. "I am lonely enough at nights, with my
thoughts. Leave me alone with them as little as you can...."

She suddenly held out her hand to him:

"Will you forgive your future empress her broken heart?" she asked,
suddenly, with a great sob.

And her pale, shrunken face turned full towards him, with two eyes like
those of a stricken doe. An irrepressible feeling of pity caused
something to well up unexpectedly in his soul; he squeezed her hand and
turned away, so as not to weep.

He looked out of the window. Some of the pointed towers, visible from
here, rose with an air of sombre romance against the sky, which was
luminous with electricity. Below them, romantically, murmured the
Danube. The mountains were like the landscape in a ballad. But no
ballad, no romance echoed between their two hearts. The prose of the
inevitable necessity was the only harmony that united them. But this
harmony also united them in reality, brought them together, made them
understand each other, feel and live at one with each other. They were
now for a minute alone and their eyes frankly sought the depths of each
other's souls. There was no need for pretence between these two: each
saw the other's sorrow lying shivering and naked in the other's heart.

It was not the riotous passion of despair that they beheld. They saw a
gentle, tremulous sadness; they looked at it with wide, staring eyes of
anguish, as children look who think they see a ghost. For them that
ghost issued from life itself: life itself became for them a ghostly
exis