Part 13 (2/2)
”I do care,” Sylvia whispered. She was very happy. She had prayed for this, lived for this. Yet she had pictured a different scene; she had seemed to hear broken words of sorrow and renunciation on his lips--a sorrow she could turn to joy. ”I do care--so much that--it is hard to think there is nothing for us but parting.”
”If you care, then we shall not be parted,” said Maximilian.
The Princess looked up at him in wonder, putting him from her, as he would have taken her in his arms. What did he mean? What was in his mind that, believing her to be Mary de Courcy, yet made it possible for him to speak as he was speaking now?
”I don't understand,” she faltered. ”What else is there for us? You are the Emperor of Rhaetia; I----”
”You are my wife, if you love me.”
In the shock of her surprise she was helpless to resist him longer; and he held her tightly, pa.s.sionately, his lips on her hair, as her face lay pressed against his heart. She could hear it beating, feel it throb under her cheek. _His wife_? How was it possible?
But he said the words again, ”My darling--my wife!”
”You love me well enough--for that?” she breathed. Sylvia had not dared to dream of such a triumph as this. ”But the law of your country? Oh, surely you have forgotten! We can only love each other, and say good-bye.” She was ready to try him yet a little further.
”We will love each other, but by heaven, we shall not say good-bye-- not after this hour. I could not lose you. As for the law, there is nothing in it which prevents my being your husband, you my wife.”
”It is strange.” Sylvia's breath came quickly. ”I have thought--I have always believed--that the Empress of Rhaetia must be of Royal blood.
I----”
”Ah, my darling, the Empress of Rhaetia I cannot make you. If you love me as well--only half as well as I love you, you will be satisfied with the empire of my heart.”
Suddenly the warm, throbbing blood in Sylvia's veins grew chill. It was as if a wind had blown up from the dark depths of the lake, to strike with an icy chill upon her soul. A moment more and she would have told him the whole truth, wors.h.i.+pping him because he had been ready to break through all the traditions of his country for her sake.
But now her pa.s.sionate impulse of grat.i.tude was frozen by that biting blast. If only it came from clouds of misunderstanding--if only the clouds would part, and give her back the full glory of a vanis.h.i.+ng joy!
”The empire of your heart!” she echoed. ”I should be richer than with all the treasures of the world, if that were mine. If you were the chamois-hunter I met on the mountain, I would love you as I love you now, and I would go with you to the ends of the earth, as your wife.
But you are not the chamois-hunter; you are an emperor. Had you told me only of a hopeless love, having nothing else to offer save that, and a promise not to forget, since your high destiny must stand between us, I could still have been happy. Yet you say more than that.
You say something I cannot understand. What an emperor offers a woman he honours, must be all or--nothing.”
”I do offer you all,” said Maximilian. ”All myself, my life, the very soul of me--all that is my own to give. The rest belongs to Rhaetia.”
”Then--what----”
”Do you not understand, my sweet, that I have asked you to be my wife?
What can a man ask more?”
”Your wife yet not the Empress. How can the two be separated?”
He tried to take her once more in his arms, but when he saw that she would stand aloof, he held his love in control and waited. He was certain that he need not wait long, for not only had he laid his heart at her feet, but, to do that, he pledged himself to a tremendous sacrifice. The step upon which he had decided, in the moment when pa.s.sion for her had overcome all prudent scruples, would create dissension among his people, rouse fierce anger in the heart of one who had been his second father, incense England and Germany because of the young Princess whose name rumour had already coupled with his, and altogether raise a fierce storm about his ears. When she had reflected, when she fully understood, she would be his, now and forever.
Very tenderly he took her hand and lifted it to his lips; then, when she did not s.n.a.t.c.h it from him--(because he was to have his chance of explanation)--he kept it between both his own, as he talked on.
”Dearest one,” he said, ”when I first knew that I loved you (as I had not known it was in my nature to love a woman), for your sake and my own I would have avoided seeing you too often. This I tell you frankly. I did not see how, in honour, such a love could end except in sorrow for me--even for you, if it were possible that I could make you care. If you and Lady de Courcy had stayed at the hotel, I think I could have been faithful to the resolve. But when Baroness von Lynar spoke to me of your coming here, at the time of my own visit, my heart leaped up. I said in my mind: At least I shall have the happiness of seeing her every day, for a time, without doing anything to darken her future. I shall have these days always to remember, when she has gone out of my life, and no harm will be done, except to myself. Still, I only thought of parting, in the end--for that seemed inevitable. But not one night have I slept since I have been here at Lynarberg. My rooms open on a lawn at the other side of the house. Often I came out here in the darkness, when every one else was sleeping; and sometimes I have stood on this very spot, where you and I stand together now-- heart to heart for the first time, my darling--thinking whether, if you should care, there was any way to be found out of such difficulties as mine. At last a ray of light seemed to s.h.i.+ne through the clouds. There was much to be overcome on both sides, and my mind was not yet clear, until I brought you here with me to-night. When I saw you by my side, the moonlight s.h.i.+ning on your face, I caught at this way of binding our lives together. I knew that my life was worth nothing to me, unless it were to be shared with you.”
”Yet you have not answered my question,” said Sylvia.
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