ere she had seen him.

For the next twenty-four hours she waited. Life became one long
endurance. She hated the forest, since she might not visit it alone. She
hated the castle, because it was her prison. She stood for hours that
first day on her balcony, surveying with scornful eyes the procession
of the devout, weary women, perspiring men, lines of children going to
something they did not comprehend, and carrying clenched in small, warm
hands drooping bunches of early mountain flowers.

And always, calling her to something she scorned, rang the bells for
mass or for vespers. The very tower below beckoned her to peace--her,
for whom there would never again be peace. She cursed the bell savagely,
put her fingers in her ears, to be wakened at dawn the next morning to
its insistent call.

There was no more sleep for her. She lay there in her bare room and gave
herself to bitter reflection. Here, in this very castle, she had met
Karl. That was eleven years before. Prince Hubert was living. During
a period of peace between the two countries a truce had been arranged,
treaties signed, with every prospect of permanence. During that time
Karl and Hubert, glad of peace, had come here for the hunting. She
remembered the stir about their coming, her father's hurried efforts to
get things in order, the cleaning and refurbishing, the peasants called
in to serve the royal guests, and stripped of their quaint costumes to
be put into ill-fitting livery.

They had bought her a new frock for evening wear, the father who was
now dead, and the old aunt who had raised her--an ugly black satin, too
mature for her. She had put it on in that very room, and wept in very
despair.

Then came the arrival, her father on the doorstep, she and her aunt
behind him, and in the hall, lines of uneasy and shuffling peasants. How
awkward and ill at ease they must have seemed! Then came the carriage,
Hubert alighting first, then Karl. Karl had seen her instantly, over her
father's bent back.

Lying there, seeing things with the clear vision of the dawn, she
wondered whether, had she met Karl later, in her sophisticated maturity,
she would have fallen in love with him. There was no way to know. He had
dawned on her then, almost the first man of rank she had ever seen. She
saw him, not only with fresh eyes, but through the halo of his position.
He was the Crown Prince of Karnia then, more dashing than Hubert, who
was already married and had always bee