lurted it out. "If you do not
want to hear me say these things, why do you stand there?"

"Oh," she faltered.

"Don't leave me now. I want to say what I came over here to say, and
then you can go back to your throne and your royal reserve, and I can go
back to the land from which you drew me. I came because I love you. Is
not that enough to drag a man to the end of the world? I came to marry
you if I could, for you were Miss Guggenslocker to me. Then you were
within my reach, but not now! I can only love a princess!" He stopped
because she had dropped to the couch beside him, her serious face turned
appealingly to his, her fingers clasping his hands fiercely.

"I forbid you to continue--I forbid you! Do you hear? I, too, have
thought and dreamed of you, and I have prayed that you might come. But
you must not tell me that you love me-you shall not!"

"I only want to know that you love me," he whispered.

"Do you think I can tell you the truth?" she cried. "I do not love you!"

Before he had fairly grasped the importance of the contradictory
sentences, she left his side and stood in the window, her breast heaving
and her face flaming.

"Then I am to believe you do," he groaned, after a moment. "I find a
princes and lose a woman!"

"I did not intend that you should have said what you have, or that I
should have told you what I have. I knew you loved me or you would not
have come to me," she said, softly.

"You would have been selfish enough to enjoy that knowledge without
giving joy in return. I see. What else could you have done? A princess!
Oh, I would to God you were Miss Guggenslocker, the woman I sought!"

"Amen to that!" she said. "Can I trust you never to renew this subject?
We have each learned what had better been left unknown. You understand
my position. Surely you will be good enough to look upon me ever
afterward as a princess and forget that I have been a woman unwittingly.
I ask you, for your sake and my own, to refrain from a renewal of this
unhappy subject. You can see how hopeless it is for both of us. I have
said much to you that I trust you will cherish as coming from a woman
who could not have helped herself and who has given to you the power to
undo her with a single word. I know you will always be the brave, true
man my heart has told me you are. You will let the beginning be the
end?"

The appeal was so earnest, so noble that honor swelled in his heart and
came from his lips in this prom