once
his mother's.

The door was opened cautiously.

Paul stepped inside, and closed it softly behind him.

CHAPTER XXIV

In the moonlit room, Paul and Opal faced each other in a silence heavy
with emotion.

It had been months since they parted, yet for some moments neither
spoke. Opal first found her voice.

"Paul! You-saw me!"

"I felt your eyes!"

"Oh, why did I come!"

Opal had begun to prepare for the night and had thrown about her
shoulders a loose robe of crimson silk. Her lustrous hair, like waves of
burnished copper, hung below her waist in beautiful confusion. With
trembling fingers she attempted to secure it.

"Your hair is wonderful, Opal! Please leave it as it is," Paul said
softly. And, curiously enough, she obeyed in silence.

"Paul," she said at last, with a little nervous laugh, as she recovered
her self-possession and seated herself on the couch, "don't stand
staring at me! I'm not a tragedy queen! You're too melodramatic. Sit
down and tell me why you've come here at this hour."

Paul obeyed mechanically, his gaze still upon her. She shrank from the
expression of his eyes--it was the old tiger-look again!

"I came because I had to, Opal. I could not have done otherwise. I have
something to tell you."

"Something to tell me?" she repeated.

"Yes. The most interesting story in the world to me, Opal--a letter from
my mother--a letter to me alone, which I can share with only one woman
in the world--the woman I love!"

Her eyes fell. As she raised her hand abstractedly to adjust the
curtain, Paul saw the flash of her betrothal ring. He caught her hand in
his and quietly slipped the ring from her finger. She seized the jewel
with her free hand and tried to thrust it into her bosom.

"No! no!--not there!" he remonstrated, and was not satisfied until she
had crossed the room and hidden it from his sight.

"Does that please your majesty?" she asked, with a curious little
tremble in her voice.

Paul started, and stared at her with a world of wonder in his eyes.
Could she know?

"Your majesty--" he stammered.

"Why not?" she laughed. "You speak as though you had but to command to
be obeyed."

"Forgive me, dear," he answered softly.

And Opal became her sympathetic self again.

"Tell me about your mother, Paul," she said.

And Paul, beginning at the very beginning, told her the whole story as
it had been told to him, reading much of his mother's letter to her,
reserving