art of the night, let her eyes feast incessantly on a
laughing sea: when she turned them to any of us, pure pleasure sparkled
in them. The breezy salt hours were visible ecstasy to her blood. If she
spoke it was but to utter a few hurried, happy words, and shrink as you
see the lightning behind a cloud-rack, suggestive of fiery swift emotion
within, and she gazed away overjoyed at the swoop and plunge of the
gannet, the sunny spray, the waves curling crested or down-like. At
night a couple of sailors, tender as women, moved her in the cot to her
cabin. We heard her voice in the dark of the morning, and her little
maid Aennchen came out and was met by me; and I at that hour had the
privilege to help move her back to her favourite place, and strap the
iron-stand fast, giving the warm-hooded cot room to swing. The keen
sensations of a return to health amid unwonted scenes made things
magical to her. When she beheld our low green Devon hills she signalled
for help to rise, and 'That is England!' she said, summoning to her
beautiful clear eyeballs the recollection of her first desire to see my
country. Her petition was that the yacht should go in nearer and nearer
to the land till she could discern men, women, and children, and their
occupations. A fisherman and his wife sat in the porch above their
hanging garden, the woman knitting, the man mending his nets, barefooted
boys and girls astride the keel of a boat below them. The princess eyed
them and wept. 'They give me happiness; I can give them nothing,' she
said.

The margravine groaned impatiently at talk of such a dieaway sort.

My father sent a couple of men on shore with a gift of money to their
family in the name of the Princess Ottilia. How she thanked him for his
prompt ideas! 'It is because you are generous you read one well.'

She had never thanked me. I craved for that vibrating music as of her
deep heart penetrated and thrilling, but shrank from grateful words
which would have sounded payment. Running before the wind swiftly on a
night of phosphorescent sea, when the waves opened to white hollows with
frayed white ridges, wreaths of hissing silver, her eyelids closed, and
her hand wandered over the silken coverlet to the hammock cloth, and
up, in a blind effort to touch. Mine joined to it. Little Aennchen was
witness. Ottilia held me softly till her slumber was deep.

CHAPTER XXVI. IN VIEW OF THE HOHENZOLLERN'S BIRTHPLACE

Our cruise came to an end in