d palm houses were more popular; and when Leopold
brought Miss Mowbray to the Waldsaal after their dance, it was in the
hope that they might not be disturbed.

She was lovelier than ever in her white dress, under the trees,
looking up at him with a wonderful look in her eyes, and the young
man's calmness was mastered by the beating of his blood.

"This is a kind of madness," he said to himself. "It will pass. It
must pass." And aloud,--meaning all the while to say something
different and commonplace,--the real words in his mind broke through
the crust of conventionality. "Why did you do it?"

Virginia's eyes widened. "I don't understand." Then, in an instant,
she found that she did understand. She knew, too, that the question
had asked itself in spite of him, but that once it had been uttered he
would stand to his guns.

"I mean the thing I shall have to thank you for always."

If Virginia had had time to think, she might have prepared some pretty
answer; but, there being no time, her response came as his question
had, from the heart. "I couldn't help doing it."

"You couldn't help risking your life to--" He dared not finish.

"It was to save--" Nor was there any end for her sentence.

Then perhaps it was not strange that he forgot certain restrictions
which a Royal man, in conversing with a commoner, is not supposed to
forget. In fact, he forgot that he was Royal, or that she was not, and
his voice grew unsteady, his tone eager, as if he had been some poor
subaltern with the girl of his first love.

"There's something I must show you," he said. Opening a button of the
military coat blazing with jewels and orders, he drew out a loop of
thin gold chain. At the end dangled a small, bright thing that flashed
under a star of electric light.

"My ring!" breathed Virginia.

Thus died the Emperor's intention to ignore the day that had been
theirs together.

"Your ring! You gave it to Leo. He kept it. He will always keep it.
Have I surprised you?"

Virginia felt it would be best to say "yes," but instead she answered
"no"; for pretty, white fibs cannot be told under such a look in a
man's eyes, by a girl who loves him.

"I have not? When did you guess the truth? Yesterday, or--"

"At Alleheiligen."

Silence fell for a minute, while Leopold digested the answer, and its
full meaning. He remembered the bread and ham; the cow he could not
milk; the ruecksacks he had carried. He remembered everything--and
laughe