t. But I have your word, Sylvia;
I am content. Not all the world could make me believe that you would
willingly retract that word."

Her name, for the first time coming from his lips, caused her to start.
She sent him a penetrating glance, but it broke on a face immobile as
marble.

"I do not recollect granting you permission to use my given name," she
said.

"O, that was before the world. But alone, alone as we are, you and I,
it is different." The smile which accompanied these words was frankness
itself, but it did not deceive Madame, who read his eyes too well. "Ali,
but the crumbs you give this love of mine are so few!" "You are the only
man in the world permitted to avow love to me. You have kissed my hand."

"A privilege which seems extended to all."

Madame colored, but there was not light enough for him to perceive it.

"The hand you kissed is the hand of the woman; others kiss it to pay
homage. Monsieur, forgive me for having deceived you, you were so easy
to deceive." His eyes met hers steadily.

"I am not Madame simply. I am Stephonia Sylvia Auersperg; the name I
assumed was my mother's." His lack of surprise alarmed her.

"I am well aware of that," he said. "You are the duchess."

Something in his tone warned her of a crisis, and she put forth her
cunning to avert it. "And, you--you will not love me less?" her voice
vibrant as the string of a viol. "I am a princess, but yet a woman. In
me there are two, the woman and the princess. The princess is proud and
ambitious; to gain her ends she stops at nothing. As a princess she may
stoop to trickery and deceit, and step back untouched. But the woman-ah,
well; for this fortnight I have been most of all the woman."

"And all this to me-is a preamble to my dismissal, since my promise
remains unfulfilled? Madame, do not think that because fate has willed
that my promise should become void, that my conscience acquits me of
dishonor. For love of you I have thrown honor to the winds. But do I
regret it? No. For I am mad, and being mad, I am not capable of reason.
I have broken all those ties which bind a man's respect to himself.
I have burned all bridges, but I laugh at that. It is only with the
knowledge that your love is mine that I can hold high my head.

"As the princess in you is proud, so is the man in me. A princess? That
is nothing; I love you. Were you the empress of all the Russias, the
most unapproachable woman in the world, I should not hesitate