he paused and added, "And to
no person. He stands apart and alone."

I hardly heeded Max's profuse thanks and honest open exultation.

"It's too good to be true," said he.

This has always seemed to me a strange little scene between us three.
The accepted conventions of emotion required that it should raise in me
and in her a feeling of remorse; for Max was so honest, so simple, so
exclusively given over to gratitude. So far as I recollect, however, I
had no such feeling, and I do not think that the Countess differed from
me in this respect. I was envious of him, not because he took her with
him (for he did not take her love), but simply because he had got
something he liked, was very pleased, and in a good temper with the
world and himself. The dream of his life, as he declared impetuously,
was fulfilled. The dream of ours was shattered. How were we to reproach
ourselves on his account? It would have been the Quixotry of conscience.

"I daresay you won't like it so much as you think," said I, with a
childish desire to make him a little less comfortable.

"Oh, yes, I shall! And you'll like it, won't you?" He turned to his wife
affectionately.

"As if I should let you take it if I didn't like it," she answered,
smiling. "Think how I shall show off before all my good countrywomen in
Paris!"

"I don't know how to thank your Majesty," said Max.

"I don't want any thanks. I haven't done it for thanks. I thought you
the best man."

"No, no," he murmured. "I like to think it's partly friendship for my
wife and me. Everybody will say so."

I looked up with a little start.

"I suppose they will," said I.

"Yes, you'll be handsomely abused."

"That'll be rather funny," I remarked almost unconsciously, as I looked
across to the Countess, smiling.

"I mean--you don't mind my saying?" asked Max; and when I nodded, he
went on, "They'll point out that you're turning to our side the moment
that the Prince is dead. Yes, it will make a good deal of talk; they'll
call it the beginning of a new era."

"Perhaps they'll be right," said she in a low voice.

I rose to my feet. I recognised the truth in what Max said, and it
seemed to add a touch of irony that the situation had lacked.
Hammerfeldt himself, if he looked down from heaven (as Victoria
picturesquely suggested), would be amused at the interpretation put on
my action; it would suit his humour well to see the great sacrifice that
I had made at the shrine of his te