tain, but every day my love
has grown a thousand fold, until now it's greater and higher than any
mountain. I can fight against myself no longer. I thought I was
strong, but this love is stronger than I am. Say that you care for
me--only say that."

"I do care," Virginia whispered. She had prayed for this, lived for
this, and she was drowning in happiness. Yet she had pictured a
different scene, a scene of storm and stress. She had heard in fancy
broken words of sorrow and noble renunciation on his lips, and in
anticipating his suffering she had felt the joy her revelation would
give. "I care--so much, so much! How hard it will be to part."

"If you care, then we shall not be parted," said Leopold.

The Princess looked up at him in wonder, holding back as he would have
caught her in his arms. What could he mean? What plan was in his mind
that, believing her to be Helen Mowbray, yet made it possible for him
to reassure her so?

"I don't understand," she faltered. "You are the Emperor, and I am no
more than--"

"You are my wife, if you love me."

In the shock of her ecstatic surprise she was helpless to resist him
longer, and he held her close and passionately, his lips on her hair,
her face crushed against his heart. She could hear it beating, feel it
throb under her cheek. His wife? Then he loved her enough for that.
Yet how was it possible for him to stand ready, for her sake, to
override the laws of his own land?

"My darling--my wife!" he said again. "To think that you love me."

"I have loved you from the first," the Princess confessed, "but I was
afraid you would feel, even if you cared, that we must say good-by.
Now--" And in an instant the whole truth would have been out; but the
word "good-by" stabbed him, and he could not let it pass.

"We shall not say good-by, not for an hour," he cried. "After this I
could not lose you. There's nothing to prevent my being your husband,
you my wife. Would to God you were of Royal blood, and you should be
my Empress--the fairest Empress that poet or historian ever saw--but
we're prisoners of Fate, you and I. We must take the goods the gods
provide. My goddess you will always be, but the Empress of Rhaetia,
even my love isn't powerful enough to make you. If I am to you only
half what you are to me, you'll be satisfied with the empire of my
heart."

Suddenly the warm blood in Virginia's veins grew chill. It was as if a
wind had blown up from the dark depths of the l