"I forbid you to continue--I forbid you! Do you hear? I, too, have thought and dreamed of you, and I have prayed that you might come. But you must not tell me that you love me-you shall not!"
"I only want to know that you love me," he whispered.
"Do you think I can tell you the truth?" she cried. "I do not love you!"
Before he had fairly grasped the importance of the contradictory sentences, she left his side and stood in the window, her breast heaving and her face flaming.
"Then I am to believe you do," he groaned, after a moment. "I find a princes and lose a woman!"
"I did not intend that you should have said what you have, or that I should have told you what I have. I knew you loved me or you would not have come to me," she said, softly.
"You would have been selfish enough to enjoy that knowledge without giving joy in return. I see. What else could you have done? A princess! Oh, I would to God you were Miss Guggenslocker, the woman I sought!"
"Amen to that!" she said. "Can I trust you never to renew this subject? We have each learned what had better been left unknown. You understand my position. Surely you will be good enough to look upon me ever afterward as a princess and forget that I have been a woman unwittingly. I ask you, for your sake and my own, to refrain from a renewal of this unhappy subject. You can see how hopeless it is for both of us. I have said much to you that I trust you will cherish as coming from a woman who could not have helped herself and who has given to you the power to undo her with a single word. I know you will always be the brave, true man my heart has told me you are. You will let the beginning be the end?"
The appeal was so earnest, so noble that honor swelled in his heart and came from his lips in this promise: "You may trust me, your Highness. Your secret is worth a thousand-fold more than mine. It is sacred with me. The joy of my life has ended, but the happiness of knowing the truth will never die. I shall remember that you love me--yes, I know you do,--and I shall never forget to love you. I will not promise that I shall never speak of it again to you. As I lie here, there comes to me a courage I did not know I could feel."