The
river laughs, maliciously mocking. The river is evil."

"Evil?" quoth she. He had checked in his step, and they stood now side
by side.

"Evil," he repeated. "Evil and cruel. It goes to swell the sea that soon
shall divide me from you, and it mocks me, rejoicing wickedly in the
pain that will presently be mine."

It took her aback. She laughed, a little breathlessly, to hide her
discomposure, and scarce knew how to answer him, scarce knew whether
she took pleasure or offense in his daring encroachment upon that royal
aloofness in which she dwelt, and in which her Spanish rearing had
taught her she must ever dwell.

"Oh, but Monsieur l'Ambassadeur, you will be with us again, perhaps
before so very long."

His answer came in a swift, throbbing question, his lips so near her
face that she could feel his breath hot upon her cheek.

"Do you wish it, madame? Do you wish it? I implore you, of your pity,
say but that you wish it, and I will come, though I tear down half a
world to reach you."

She recoiled in Wright and displeasure before a wooing so impetuous and
violently outspoken; though the displeasure was perhaps but a passing
emotion, the result of early training. Yet she contrived to answer him
with the proper icy dignity due to her position as a princess of Spain,
now Queen of France.

"Monsieur, you forget yourself. The Queen of France does not listen to
such words. You are mad, I think."

"Yes, I am mad," he flung back. "Mad with love--so mad that I have
forgot that you are a queen and I an ambassador. Under the ambassador
there is a man, under the queen a woman--our real selves, not the titles
with which Fate seeks to dissemble our true natures. And with the whole
strength of my true nature do I love you, so potently, so overwhelmingly
that I will not believe you sensible of no response."

Thus torrentially he delivered himself, and swept her a little off
her feet. She was a woman, as he said; a queen, it is true; but also
a neglected, coldly-used wife; and no one had ever addressed her in
anything approaching this manner, no one had ever so much as suggested
that her existence could matter greatly, that in her woman's nature
there was the magic power of awakening passion and devotion. He was so
splendidly magnificent, so masterful and unrivalled, and he came thus
to lay his being, as it were, in homage at her feet. It touched her a
little, who knew so little of the real man. It cost her an effor