ther the scene that, led by
memory, I lay for my new exploits will be the true one--for I love to
see myself once again in the crowded streets of Strelsau, or beneath the
frowning keep of the Castle of Zenda.

Thus led, my broodings leave the future, and turn back on the past.
Shapes rise before me in long array--the wild first revel with the King,
the rush with my brave tea-table, the night in the moat, the pursuit in
the forest: my friends and my foes, the people who learnt to love and
honour me, the desperate men who tried to kill me. And, from amidst
these last, comes one who alone of all of them yet moves on earth,
though where I know not, yet plans (as I do not doubt) wickedness, yet
turns women's hearts to softness and men's to fear and hate. Where is
young Rupert of Hentzau--the boy who came so nigh to beating me? When
his name comes into my head, I feel my hand grip and the blood move
quicker through my veins: and the hint of Fate--the presentiment--seems
to grow stronger and more definite, and to whisper insistently in my ear
that I have yet a hand to play with young Rupert; therefore I exercise
myself in arms, and seek to put off the day when the vigour of youth
must leave me.

One break comes every year in my quiet life. Then I go to Dresden, and
there I am met by my dear friend and companion, Fritz von Tarlenheim.
Last time, his pretty wife Helga came, and a lusty crowing baby with
her. And for a week Fritz and I are together, and I hear all of what
falls out in Strelsau; and in the evenings, as we walk and smoke
together, we talk of Sapt, and of the King, and often of young Rupert;
and, as the hours grow small, at last we speak of Flavia. For every year
Fritz carries with him to Dresden a little box; in it lies a red rose,
and round the stalk of the rose is a slip of paper with the words
written: "Rudolf--Flavia--always." And the like I send back by him. That
message, and the wearing of the rings, are all that now bind me and the
Queen of Ruritania. Far--nobler, as I hold her, for the act--she has
followed where her duty to her country and her House led her, and is the
wife of the King, uniting his subjects to him by the love they bear to
her, giving peace and quiet days to thousands by her self-sacrifice.
There are moments when I dare not think of it, but there are others when
I rise in spirit to where she ever dwells; then I can thank God that I
love the noblest lady in the world, the most gracious and