he was to have his chance of
explanation) he held it between both his own, as he talked on.

"Dearest one," he said, "when I first knew I loved you--loved you as I
didn't dream I could love a woman--for your sake and my own, I would
have avoided meeting you too often. This I tell you frankly. I didn't
see how, in honor, such a love could end except in despair for me, and
sorrow even for you, if you should come to care. Had you and Lady
Mowbray stayed on at the hotel in Kronburg, I think I could have held
to my resolve. But when Baroness von Lyndal suggested your coming
here, my heart leaped up. I said in my mind, 'At least I shall have
the joy of seeing her every day, for a time, without doing anything to
darken her future. Afterwards, when she has gone out of my life, I
shall have that radiance to remember. And so no harm will be done in
the end, except that I shall have to pay, by suffering.' Still, I had
no thought of the future without a parting; I felt that inevitable.
And the suffering came hand in hand with the joy, for not a night
here at Lyndalberg have I slept. If I had been weak, I should have
groaned aloud in the agony of renunciation.

"My rooms open on a lawn. More than once I've come out into the
darkness, when all the household was sleeping. Some times I have
walked to this very spot where you and I stand now--heart to heart for
the first time, my darling--asking myself whether there were any way
out of the labyrinth. It was not until I brought you here and saw you
by my side with the moon rays for a crown, that a flash of blinding
light seemed to pierce the clouds. Suddenly I saw all things clearly,
and though there will be difficulties, I count them as overcome."

"Still you haven't answered my question," said Virginia in a low,
strained voice.

"I'm coming to that now. It was best that you should know first
all that's been troubling my heart and brain during these few,
bitter-sweet days which have taught me so much. You know, men who have
their place at the head of great nations can't think first of
themselves, or even of those they love better than themselves. If they
hope to snatch at personal happiness, they must take the one way open
to them, and be thankful.

"Don't do me the horrible injustice to believe that I wouldn't be
proud to show you to my subjects as their Empress; but instead, I can
offer only what men of Royal blood for hundreds of years have offered
to women whom they honored a