r as you thought me. I
shall not be long gone."

"You will write to me, Rudolf?"

I was weak, but I could not say a word to stir suspicion in her.

"I'll send you all my heart every day," said I.

"And you'll run no danger?"

"None that I need not."

"And when will you be back? Ah, how long will it be!"

"When shall I be back?" I repeated.

"Yes, yes! Don't be long, dear, don't be long. I shan't sleep while
you're away."

"I don't know when I shall be back," said I.

"Soon, Rudolf, soon?"

"God knows, my darling. But, if never--"

"Hush, hush!" and she pressed her lips to mine.

"If never," I whispered, "you must take my place; you'll be the only one
of the House then. You must reign, and not weep for me."

For a moment she drew herself up like a very queen.

"Yes, I will!" she said. "I will reign. I will do my part though all my
life will be empty and my heart dead; yet I'll do it!"

She paused, and sinking against me again, wailed softly.

"Come soon! come soon!"

Carried away, I cried loudly:

"As God lives, I--yes, I myself--will see you once more before I die!"

"What do you mean?" she exclaimed, with wondering eyes; but I had no
answer for her, and she gazed at me with her wondering eyes.

I dared not ask her to forget, she would have found it an insult. I
could not tell her then who and what I was. She was weeping, and I had
but to dry her tears.

"Shall a man not come back to the loveliest lady in all the wide world?"
said I. "A thousand Michaels should not keep me from you!"

She clung to me, a little comforted.

"You won't let Michael hurt you?"

"No, sweetheart."

"Or keep you from me?"

"No, sweetheart."

"Nor anyone else?"

And again I answered:

"No, sweetheart."

Yet there was one--not Michael--who, if he lived, must keep me from
her; and for whose life I was going forth to stake my own. And his
figure--the lithe, buoyant figure I had met in the woods of Zenda--the
dull, inert mass I had left in the cellar of the hunting-lodge--seemed
to rise, double-shaped, before me, and to come between us, thrusting
itself in even where she lay, pale, exhausted, fainting, in my arms, and
yet looking up at me with those eyes that bore such love as I have never
seen, and haunt me now, and will till the ground closes over me--and
(who knows?) perhaps beyond.

CHAPTER 12

I Receive a Visitor and Bait a Hook

About five miles from Zenda--on the opposite side from that o