riage.'

'But you will vow before God to love and obey this man; you will give him
your hand and kneel with him in prayer. Something of the sanctity of our
true vows will be filched away. Sacred you are to me for ever, but oh!
this will be desecration! you cannot, you must not----' he moaned.

'You knew this before. You knew and approved, and now you hinder the
completion of the only plan by which I can return to you. You cannot give
up your Dukedom, you cannot leave Stuttgart, and we cannot live apart.'
She spoke harshly.

'But is Stuttgart so much to you? Wilhelmine, do you love me only as Duke
of Wirtemberg?' His eyes were full of tears. 'Alas! I am the most
miserable of men.'

'Eberhard, heart of my life, look in my face and see if I love you! But
because I love you I dare not take you away from your great position,
from your ambition.'

'Ambition,' he broke in, 'ambition! I am ready to renounce
everything----'

'Will you let yourself sink into a mooning poet, my hero of great
battles? No! you shall go back, dear love--back to your grand, soldier's
life! See, I will stay here and dream of you, if you will not let me take
the only path back to Wirtemberg. You shall write to me, sometimes send
me a poem, a jewel perhaps--but we shall be parted! O Eberhard!' She
sighed deeply, but her strange, hard eyes watched him narrowly. He turned
away his face. She saw that her reminder of his military ambition had
succeeded as she expected.

'You are right. Alas! this horrible degradation, this masquerading before
God--and yet it is the only way.'

Her arms stole round him. Against his cheek he felt her smooth skin, her
warm lips sought his.

'I love you, only you,' she whispered. 'In a few days I follow you to
Stuttgart. Come to me!'

He flung her from him almost roughly.

'Not now! God in heaven! not now! Can you dream that at such a time I
could? It would make the hideous bargain you contemplate to-morrow one
degree more vile.' He turned from her and fled. In a moment she heard the
clatter of his horse's hoofs in the courtyard.

CHAPTER XV

THE RETURN

A TRAVELLING coach and six horses thundered into Stuttgart, driven at a
hand gallop, and raised clouds of white dust as it passed down the
Graben. An escort of Silver Guards rode with this coach. One of the
soldiers' horses knocked over a child playing in the roadway, but the
cavalcade passed on unheeding, leaving the little crushed figure lying
limp