tion.'

'So I see, Monseigneur, and therefore I beg you to depart.'

'Wilhelmine, do you love me? Alas! alas!'

'I love you, mon Prince, but these taunts are unbearable. I have no one
to protect me--you cannot, for you yourself are the cause of all the
indignities heaped upon me.'

'Ah, would that I could make you Duchess, my wife, safe from insult!'

'You dare not, though other princes have had the courage thus to shield
those they loved.'

'I dare not? I? God! who shall tell me that I dare not?' he cried.

'You dare not,' she answered, and again as she swept from the room, over
her shoulder she flung scornfully: 'You dare not!'

* * * * *

In the panelled living-room of the Neuhaus, on the morning of the 29th
July 1707, Madame de Ruth and her peasant servant were busying themselves
with a large table and a heap of silken hangings. The lady was draping
the table with these, and her efforts had caused her highly piled-up
head-dress to become deranged; the elaborate structure leaned on one side
and scattered a shower of powder over Madame de Ruth's shoulders. The
servant interrupted his work of hammering nails into the draped silk on
the table; he stared at his mistress and grinned. 'Go on, stupid head,
and never mind an old woman's hairdress,' she said good-humouredly. 'I
shall be fine enough this afternoon, and so wilt thou, for I shall give
thee a new coat.' She rose from her knees and surveyed her handiwork.
Taking a large bowl filled with roses, she placed it upon the table, then
she went to a cupboard and began to hunt through its varied contents. She
sought a Bible, and indeed it was the first time in her life that she had
searched the Scriptures, as she reflected grimly. She had a dim
recollection of having seen a worn Bible consorting oddly with the other
books in that cupboard. After some time she found the Bible and placed it
upon the silk-draped table. She stood a moment absent-mindedly, gazing
from the window at the sunlight playing through the delicate tracery in
the beech branches without, her hands mechanically turning over the
leaves of the Bible. Suddenly her fingers touched something between the
pages, something that crumbled away beneath her touch, a withered flower,
the faded, brittle ghost of some vanished summer day. She drew away her
hand quickly as though the flower stung her. It had conjured up the
long-past loss and sorrow of a day when she had given birt