"No, no!" she cried, vehemently.
"Forgive me! You can at least let me say that as long as I live I may cherish and encourage the little hope that all is not dead. Your Highness, let me say that my family never knows when it is defeated, either in love or in war."
"The walls which surround the heart of a princess are black and grim, impenetrable when she defends it, my boasting American," she said, smiling sadly.
"Yet some prince of the realm will batter down the wall and win at a single blow that which a mere man could not conquer in ten lifetimes. Such is the world."
"The prince may batter down and seize, but he can never conquer. But enough of this! I am the Princess of Graustark; you are my friend, Grenfall Lorry, and there is only a dear friendship between us," she cried, resuming her merry humor so easily that he started with surprise and not a little displeasure.
"And a throne," he added, smiling, how ever.
"And a promise," she reminded him.
"From which I trust I may some day be released," said he, sinking back, afflicted with a discouragement and a determination of equal power. He could see hope and hopelessness ahead.
"By death!"
"No; by life! It may be sooner than you think!"
"You are forgetting your promise already."
"Your Highness's pardon," he begged.
They laughed, but their hearts were sad, this luckless American and hapless sovereign who would, if she could, be a woman.
"It is now three o'clock--the hour when you were to have called to see me," she said, again sitting unconcernedly before him in the window seat. She was not afraid of him. She was a princess.
"I misunderstood you, your highness. I remembered the engagement, but it seems I was mistaken as to the time. I came at three in the morning!"
"And found me at home!"
"In an impregnable castle, with ogres all about."