s well as loved. You must have heard even
in England of what is called a morganatic marriage? It is that I offer
you."

With a cry of pain--the cruel pain of wounded, disappointed love--the
Princess tore her hand from his.

"Never!" she exclaimed. "It's an insult."

"An insult? No, a thousand times no. I see that even now you don't
understand."

"I think that I understand very well, too well," said Virginia,
brokenly. The beautiful fairy palace of happiness that she had watched
as it grew, lay shattered, destroyed in the moment which ought to have
seen its triumphant completion.

[Illustration: _"Never!" she exclaimed. "It's an insult"_]

"I tell you that you cannot understand, or you wouldn't say--you
wouldn't dare to say, my love--that I'd insulted you. Don't you see,
don't you know, that you would be my wife in the sight of all men,
as well as in the sight of God."

"Your wife, you call it!" the Princess gave a harsh little laugh which
hurt as tears could not hurt. "You seem to have strange ideas of that
word, which has always been sacred to me. A morganatic marriage! That
is a mere pretense, an hypocrisy. I would be 'your wife,' you say. I
would give you all my love, all my life. You, in return, would give
me--your left hand. And you know well that, in a country which
tolerates such a one-sided travesty of marriage, the laws would hold
you free to marry another woman--a Royal woman, whom you could make an
Empress--as free as if I had no existence."

"Great Heaven, that you should speak so!" he broke out. "What if the
law did hold me free? Can you dream--do you put me so low as to dream
that my heart would hold me free? My soul would be bound to you
forever."

"So you may believe, now. But the knowledge that you could change
would be death to me--a death to die daily. Yes, I tell you again, it
was an insult to offer a lot so miserable, so contemptible, to a woman
you profess to love. How could you do it? If only you had never
spoken the hateful words! If only you had left me the ideal I had of
you--noble, glorious, above the whole world of men. But after all you
are selfish,--cruel. If you had said 'I love you, yet we must part,
for Duty stands between us.' I could--but no, I can never tell you now
what I could have answered if you had said that, instead of breaking
my heart."

Under the fire of her reproach he stood still, his lips tight, his
shoulders braced, as if he held his breast open for the knif