long; and a gentle expression
overspread her face: pride, that the Duke of Xara lay there
half-fainting on her shoulder, and sudden passion, containing much
motherliness and pity, blended into a strange feeling in her soul. She
softly smoothed back his hair, wiped his perspiring forehead with her
handkerchief.... And the strange sensation became still stranger within
her, intenser in its two constituent parts: intenser in pride, intenser
in compassionate love, that of a mistress and mother in one. Then, with
a smile, she pressed the handkerchief, lightly moistened with the
imperial sweat, to her trembling lips. The soft aroma of the moisture
seemed to intoxicate her with a fragrance of virile youth.... She
thought of the letters and photographs in the silver casket with the
turquoises. A deep melancholy, because of life, smarted through her
soul; yet more of her memories seemed to fly away like dust. Then,
refusing to yield any longer to this melancholy, she bent her head and,
serious now, giving herself to the present, which revived her with new
happiness, she pressed her lips, trembling still more than before, on
Othomar's mouth. For a moment she lingered there; her eyes closed; then
she gave her kiss.

They opened their eyes together, looked at each other. Earnestly sombre,
almost tragically, she flashed her glance into his. He said nothing,
remained gazing at her, still half in her arms. The colour came mantling
back to his cheeks. Their eyes imbibed one another. He felt the unknown
opening before him, he felt himself being initiated into the world of
knowledge which he suspected in her and did not know of himself. But he
felt no joy because of it; her eyes continued sombre. Then he merely
took her hand, just pressed it in a solitary caress and said, his eyes
still gazing into her deep, quiet, dark glances of passion, his features
still rigid with surprise:

"I was feeling a little giddy, I fear, just now? Please forgive me,
duchess...."

She too continued to look at him, at first sombrely, then in smiling
humility. Her pride soared to its climax with one beat of its wings: the
mouth of her future emperor was still sealed with her kiss! Her love
touched her inner life as a wafting breeze skims over a lake, rippling
its surface into utter silver with a single fresh gust and stirring it
to its very depths; she worshipped him because of his youthful majesty,
which so graciously accepted her kiss without further ackn