o wait, and of
course you are certain that all unfair opinions of you must come right
in the end.'

But Rallywood passed over her many sentences to seize the central idea
that appealed to him.

'Yes, I have learned to wait. I told you that everything comes to him
who waits. Unfortunately a proverb is true often, not always. One thing
can never come to me however long I wait. For me there is no hope.'

'I don't know what you hope for,' replied the girl, slowly, as if she
were choosing her words; but she hardly knew what she said, she was lost
in a multitude of dreams, and her words but filled in the rare crevices
between them. 'I thought that every man carried his own fate in his own
hand.'

'A man can fight the tangible, but no man can struggle against the
ordinary laws of social life. We may laugh at conventional methods, but
even in Revonde there are some which must be yielded to.'

'I don't think,' said Valerie, 'we yield to many in Revonde.'

Rallywood saw a group of people advancing towards them. Valerie, with
her changes of mood and manner, distracted him, and drove him on to say
what he had resolved never to be tempted into saying.

'I am a soldier--only a soldier; I gain a livelihood, but no more. I
have no luck and no genius. To make a fortune or a name is beyond me.
And without fortune many desirable things are impossible.'

Valerie turned upon him a bewildering smile.

'I shall know for the future, Captain Rallywood, what you are thinking
of. You will be thinking, for all those grave eyes of yours, of the
fortune you cannot make!'

'Not quite that, Mademoiselle,' he answered, 'I shall be thinking of the
girl I cannot win.'

Valerie found herself drawn away from him by the passing group. She was
aware of a warm throb at her heart, she was trembling a little, and the
fear of the morning had temporarily vanished. For no definite reason
which she could afterwards discover, she felt suddenly happy.

By evening the _tsa_ had blown away the snow-clouds for the time, and a
thin moon gleamed fitfully over the wide expanses of white. Remote,
muffled in leagues of snow, and alive with hungry passions and
unscrupulous strength, the Castle of Sagan did not, on that wild January
night, offer desirable housing to the Grand Duke of Maasau. He had yet
some thirty hours to spend as his cousin's guest before he could return
to his capital without showing suspicion or giving offence. A hundred
times he wished hims