And the sky was gray, with the
soft gray of velvet, under a crust of diamonds which flashed as the
spangles on a woman's fan flash, when it trembles in her hand.

White moths, happily ignorant that summer would come no more for them,
drifted out from the shadows like rose petals blown by the soft wind.
On a trellis, a crowding sisterhood of pale roses drooped their heads
downward _in memento mori_. It was a silver night; a night of
enchantment.

Leopold had meant to take Virginia out only to see the moon rise over
the water, turning the great smooth sheet of jet into a silver shield;
for there had been clouds or spurts of rain on other nights, and he
had said to himself that never again, perhaps, would they two stand
together under the white spell of the moon. He had meant to keep her
for five minutes, or ten at the most, and then to bring her back; but
they had walked down to the path which girdled the cliff above the
lake. The moon touched her golden hair and her pure face like a
benediction. He dared not look at her thus for long, and when there
came a sudden quick rustling in the grass at their feet, he bent down,
glad of any change in the current of his thoughts.

Some tiny, winged thing of the night sought a lodging in a bell-shaped
flower whose blue color the moon had drunk, and as Leopold stooped,
the same impulse made Virginia bend.

He stretched out his hand to gather the low-growing branch of
blossoms, which he would give the girl as a souvenir of this hour, and
their fingers met. Lake and garden swam before the eyes of the
Princess as the Emperor's hand closed over hers.

Her great moment had come; yet now that it was here, womanlike she
wished it away--not gone forever, oh no, but waiting just round the
corner of the future.

"The flowers are yours--I give them to you," she laughed, as if she
fancied it was in eagerness to grasp the disputed spray that he had
pressed her fingers.

"You are the one flower I want--flower of all the world," he answered,
in a choked voice, speaking words he had not meant to speak; but the
ice barriers that held back the torrent of which he had told her, had
melted long ago and now had been swept away. Other barriers which he
had built up in their place--his convictions, his duty as a man at the
head of a nation--were gone too. "I love you," he stammered, "I love
you far better than my life, which you saved. I've loved you ever
since our first hour together on the moun