s wondered," he said, "what your thoughts were at that
moment, what you have thought of me since."

She shivered a little, but did not answer him.

"Very soon," he reminded her, "I shall have passed out of your life."

He heard the sudden, half-stifled exclamation. He felt rather than saw
the eyes which pleaded with him, and he hastened on.

"You understand what is meant by the inevitable," he continued.
"Whatever has happened in the matters with which I have been concerned
has been inevitable. I have had no choice--sometimes no choice in such
events is possible. Do not think," he went on, "that I tell you this to
beg for your sympathy. I would not have a thing other than as it is.
But when we have said goodbye, I want you to believe the best of me, to
think as kindly as you can of the things which you may not be able to
comprehend. Remember that we are not so emotional a nation as that to
which you belong. Our affections are but seldom touched. We live without
feeling for many days, sometimes for longer, even, than many days. It
has not been so altogether with me. I have felt more than I dare, at
this moment, to speak of."

"Yet you go," she murmured.

"Yet I go," he assented. "Nothing in the world is more certain than that
I must say farewell to you and all of my good friends here. In a sense
I want this to be our farewell. Leaving out of the question just now the
more serious dangers which threaten me, the result of my mission here
alone will make me unpopular in this country. As the years pass, I fear
that nothing can draw your own land and mine into any sort of accord.
That is why I asked you to come here with me and listen while I said
these few words to you, why I ask you now that, whatever the future may
bring, you will sometimes spare me a kindly thought."

"I think you know," she answered, "that you need not ask that."

"You will marry Sir Charles Somerfield," he continued, "and you will be
happy. In this country men develop late. Somerfield, too, will develop,
I am sure. He will become worthy even, I trust, to be your husband, Miss
Penelope. Something was said of his going into Parliament. When he is
Foreign Minister and I am the Counsellor of the Emperor, we may perhaps
send messages to one another, if not across the seas, through the
clouds."

A man's footstep approached them. Somerfield himself drew near and
hesitated. The Prince rose at once.

"Sir Charles," he said, "I have been bidding farewe