it might have been an easy and clever way for an
unscrupulous woman to take revenge. Dal would have gone, and perhaps
have said dreadful things to the Chancellor, who was waiting
down-stairs for news, but I begged him not. From being the saddest
girl in the world, I'd suddenly become the happiest, for the
Chancellor had told Dal, and Dal had told me, that you had _followed
Helen Mowbray to ask her to be the Empress_. That changed everything,
for then I knew you really loved her; but--just to punish you for what
I suffered through you last night, I longed to put you to one more
test. I said, 'Let the Chancellor carry out his plot. Let me go with
you to your hunting lodge.' At first Dal wouldn't consent, but when I
begged him, he did,--for generally I can get my way with people, I
warn you.

[Illustration: "_We shall never be old, for we love each other," said
the Emperor_]

"That's all, except that I hadn't realized how severe the test would
be, until you came in and I saw the look in your eyes. It was a dagger
of ice in my heart. I prayed Heaven to make you believe in me, without
a word, oh, _how_ I prayed through all that dreadful moment, and
how I looked at you, saying with my eyes, 'I love you; I am true.' If
you had failed me then, it would have killed me, but--"

"There could be no but," the Emperor broke in. "To doubt is not to
love. When a man loves, he knows. Even out of darkness, a light comes
and tells him."

"Then you forgive me--for to-night, and for everything, from the
beginning?"

"Forgive you?"

"And if I'd been different, more like other girls content with a
conventional affection, you wouldn't have loved me more?"

He took her in his arms and held her as if he would never let her go.

"If you had been different, I wouldn't have loved you at all," he
said. "But if _things_ had been different, I couldn't have helped
loving you, just the same. I should have been fated to fall in love
with Princess Virginia of Baumenburg-Drippe at first sight, exactly I
as fell in love with Helen Mowbray--"

"Ah, but at best you'd have fallen in love with Virginia because it
was your duty; and you fell in love with Helen Mowbray because it was
your duty not to. Which makes it so much nicer."

"It was no question of duty, but of destiny," said the Emperor. "The
stars ordained that I should love you."

"Then I wish--" and Virginia laughed happily, as she could afford to
laugh now--"that the stars had told me,