oul,
though my lips were silent. For I madly adored her. Then, then, I was
a man! My life belonged to Poland, my soul to art, but my heart was a
sealed temple of love, a temple where Valerie, the beloved, the secretly
worshiped, sat alone on her throne.

"One day a woman, radiant in youth, and reflecting Valerie's own beauty,
was brought to the chateau by Troubetskoi, who had journeyed on to
Vienna. It was Alixe Delavigne, the woman whom I saw last with you. A
month later Valerie called me to her side: 'My poor Casimir,' she said,
as I knelt at her feet, 'I am dying! The struggle will not be a long
one. I know the secret of your boyish heart. Your eyes have spoken and
your music has reached my heart. Your love is written in your songs
without words. When you have forgotten me, there is Alixe; she is alone
upon earth. Let me seal your heart to hers, and even in death I shall
feel that I love you both.' Then," the artist sobbed, "I lost my head.
I told her all in mad, burning words. She raised her eyes to mine, and
softly said: 'I shall see you no more unless Alixe is with us, for I
love Pierre and he loves me. When I am gone, Alixe will be the only one
who knows the secret of my life.'

"It was two months later--for I would not leave her side, even Pierre
Troubetskoi could not see her passing away, for it was a mysterious
malady--when a sudden alarm brought me to my senses. My secret society
work was done, and yet I lingered there, at the very steps of the
scaffold. Alixe Delavigne burst into my room at midnight.

"'Hasten!' she cried. 'Even now the Cossacks are surrounding the house!'
She let me out through the secret passage of the old Chateau. A cloak
was thrown over me by the Intendant. He was a Pole--and one true to
the old blood. Alixe pressed a purse upon me. An address in Paris was
whispered. 'I will write! Go! For Valerie's sake, go!'

"Forty-eight hours later I crossed the Galician frontier at Lemberg
disguised as a Polish peasant. My guardian, the Intendant, turned me
over to our friends in the valley of the Styr. After six months of
wandering, I finally reached Paris in safety. There were sorrowful
letters awaiting me. Valerie was hidden forever in the yawning tombs
of the gloomy old chapel of Jitomir, and Alixe herself wrote of Pierre
Troubetlskoi's generous blinding of the pursuit. I was, however,
prosecuted and hunted. I fled to America, for all our plans of revolt
were miserably wrecked--and by Polish