James leveled the ground with careful accuracy; I do
not remember doing anything except wiping my forehead and feeling very
hungry.

"Good Lord, she's gone after him!" said Sapt, as he read. Then he handed
me the letter.

I will not set out what the queen wrote. The purport seemed to us, who
did not share her feelings, pathetic indeed and moving, but in the end
(to speak plainly) folly. She had tried to endure her sojourn at Zenda,
she said; but it drove her mad. She could not rest; she did not know how
we fared, nor how those in Strelsau; for hours she had lain awake; then
at last falling asleep, she had dreamt.

"I had had the same dream before. Now it came again. I saw him so plain.
He seemed to me to be king, and to be called king. But he did not answer
nor move. He seemed dead; and I could not rest." So she wrote, ever
excusing herself, ever repeating how something drew her to Strelsau,
telling her that she must go if she would see "him whom you know," alive
again. "And I must see him--ah, I must see him! If the king has had the
letter, I am ruined already. If he has not, tell him what you will or
what you can contrive. I must go. It came a second time, and all so
plain. I saw him; I tell you I saw him. Ah, I must see him again. I
swear that I will only see him once. He's in danger--I know he's in
danger; or what does the dream mean? Bernenstein will go with me, and I
shall see him. Do, do forgive me: I can't stay, the dream was so plain."
Thus she ended, seeming, poor lady, half frantic with the visions that
her own troubled brain and desolate heart had conjured up to torment
her. I did not know that she had before told Mr. Rassendyll himself of
this strange dream; though I lay small store by such matters, believing
that we ourselves make our dreams, fashioning out of the fears and
hopes of to-day what seems to come by night in the guise of a mysterious
revelation. Yet there are some things that a man cannot understand, and
I do not profess to measure with my mind the ways of God.

However, not why the queen went, but that she had gone, concerned us. We
had returned to the house now, and James, remembering that men must eat
though kings die, was getting us some breakfast. In fact, I had great
need of food, being utterly worn out; and they, after their labors, were
hardly less weary. As we ate, we talked; and it was plain to us that I
also must go to Strelsau. There, in the city, the drama must be played
out. T