tions from the moon that scaled the mountain
top. She stood at the balustrade, her hands clasping a bouquet of red
roses, her chin lifted, her eyes gazing toward the mountain's crest,
the prettiest picture he had ever seen. The strange dizziness of love
overpowered him. His hungry eyes glanced upward towards the sky which
she was blessing with her gaze, and beheld another picture, gloomy,
grim, cheerless.

Against the moonlit screen of the universe clung the black tower of
that faraway monastery in the clouds, the home of the monks of Saint
Valentine. Out of the world, above the world, a part of the sky itself,
it stood like the spectre of a sentinel whose ghostly guardian ship
appalled and yet soothed.

He could not, would not move. To have done so meant the desecration of
a picture so delicate that a breath upon its surface would have swept
it forever from the vision. How long he revelled in the glory of the
picture he knew not, for it was as if he looked from a dream. At last
he saw her look down upon the roses, lift them slowly and drop them over
the rail. They fell to the ground below. He thought he understood; the
gift of a prince despised.

They were not twenty feet apart. He advanced to her side, his hat in
one hand, his stick--the one that felled the Viennese--trembling in the
other.

"I did not know you were here," she exclaimed, in half frightened
amazement. "I left my ladies inside."

He was standing beside her, looking down into the eyes.

"And I am richer because of your ignorance," he said, softly. "I have
seen a picture that shall never leave my memory--never! Its beauty
enthralled, enraptured. Then I saw the drama of the roses. Ah, your
Highness, the crown is not always a mask."

"The roses were--were of no consequence," she faltered.

"I have heard how you stand between two suitors and that wretched
treaty. My heart has ached to tell you how I pity you."

"It is not pity I need, but courage. Pity will not aid me in my duty,
Mr. Lorry. It stands plainly before me, this duty, but I have not the
courage to take it up and place it about my neck forever."

"You do not, cannot love this Lorenz?" he asked.

"Love him!" she cried. "Ach, I forget! You do not know him. Yet I shall
doubtless be his wife." There was an eternity of despair in that low,
steady voice.

"You shall not! I swear you shall not!"

"Oh, he is a prince! I must accept the offer that means salvation to
Graustark. Why do you m