"I was not speaking of you. I was
speaking of a man who truly loved a woman."

She rode away, and left him there. And because she was hurt and
reckless, and not quite sane, she gave him a very bad half-hour.
She jumped again, higher each time, silencing the protests of the
riding-master with an imperious gesture. Her horse tired. His sides
heaved, his delicate nostrils dilated. She beat him with her crop, and
flung him again at the hurdle.

Prince Ferdinand William Otto was delighted, a trifle envious. "She
jumps better than I do," he observed to Nikky, "but she is in a very bad
humor."

At last, his patience exhausted and fear in his heart, Nikky went to
her. "Hedwig," he said sternly. "I want you to stop this childishness.
You will kill yourself."

"I am trying very hard to."

"You will kill your horse. Look at him."

For answer she raised her crop, but Nikky bent forward and caught the
reins.

"How dare you!" she said furiously.

For answer Nikky turned and, riding beside her, led her weary horse out
of the ring. And long training asserted itself. Hedwig dared not make a
scene before the waiting grooms. She rode in speechless rage, as white
as Nikky, and trembling with fury. She gave him no time to assist her to
dismount, but slipped off herself and left him, her slim, black-habited
figure held very straight.

"I'm afraid she's very angry with you," said the Crown Prince, as they
walked back to the Palace. "She looked more furious than she did about
the fruitcake."

That afternoon Nikky went for a walk. He took Toto with him, and they
made the circuit of the Park, which formed an irregular circle about
the narrow streets of the old citadel where the wall had once stood. He
walked, as he had done before, because he was in trouble, but with
this difference, that then, he had walked in order to think, and now he
walked to forget.

In that remote part where the Gate of the Moon stood, and where,
outside, in mediaeval times had been the jousting-ground, the Park
widened. Here was now the city playground, the lake where in winter the
people held ice carnivals, and where, now that spring was on the way,
they rode in the little cars of the Scenic Railway.

An old soldier with a wooden leg, and a child, were walking together
by the lake, and conversing seriously. A dog was burying a bone under
a near-by tree. Toto, true to his instincts, waited until the bone was
covered, and then, with calm proprietorship,