“Yes—just lately. I—I never did before.”

Pure triumph filled me. It was I—Rudolf Rassendyll—who had won her! I caught her round the waist.

“You didn’t love me before?” I asked.

She looked up into my face, smiling, as she whispered:

“It must have been your Crown. I felt it first on the Coronation Day.”

“Never before?” I asked eagerly.

She laughed low.

“You speak as if you would be pleased to hear me say “Yes” to that,” she said.

“Would “Yes” be true?”

“Yes,” I just heard her breathe, and she went on in an instant: “Be careful, Rudolf; be careful, dear. He will be mad now.”

“What, Michael? If Michael were the worst—”

“What worse is there?”

There was yet a chance for me. Controlling myself with a mighty effort, I took my hands off her and stood a yard or two away. I remember now the note of the wind in the elm trees outside.

“If I were not the King,” I began, “if I were only a private gentleman—”

Before I could finish, her hand was in mine.

“If you were a convict in the prison of Strelsau, you would be my King,” she said.

And under my breath I groaned, “God forgive me!” and, holding her hand in mine, I said again:

“If I were not the King—”

“Hush, hush!” she whispered. “I don’t deserve it—I don’t deserve to be doubted. Ah, Rudolf! does a woman who marries without love look on the man as I look on you?”

And she hid her face from me.

For more than a minute we stood there together; and I, even with my arm about her, summoned up what honour and conscience her beauty and the toils that I was in had left me.

“Flavia,” I said, in a strange dry voice that seemed not my own, “I am not—”

As I spoke—as she raised her eyes to me—there was a heavy step on the gravel outside, and a man appeared at the window. A little cry burst from Flavia, as she sprang back from me. My half-finished sentence died on my lips. Sapt stood there, bowing low, but with a stern frown on his face.

“A thousand pardons, sire,” said he, “but his Eminence the Cardinal has waited this quarter of an hour to offer his respectful adieu to your Majesty.”

I met his eye full and square; and I read in it an angry warning. How long he had been a listener I knew not, but he had come in upon us in the nick of time.