Page:Anthony Hope - Rupert of Hentzau.djvu/357

Rh fear lest they should see her. Then she sat down and turned her face towards mine. I read in her eyes something of the conflict of emotions which possessed her; she seemed at once to deprecate my disapproval and to ask my sympathy; she prayed me to be gentle to her fault and kind to her happiness; self-reproach shadowed her joy, but the golden gleam of it strayed through. I looked eagerly at her: this would not have been her bearing had she come from a last farewell; for the radiance was there, however much dimmed by sorrow and by fearfulness.

"Fritz," she began softly, "I am wicked—so wicked. "Won't God punish me for my gladness?"

I fear I paid little heed to her trouble, though I can understand it well enough now.

"Gladness?" I cried in a low voice. "Then you've persuaded him?"

She smiled at me for an instant.

"I mean you've agreed?" I stammered.

Her eyes again sought mine, as she said in a whisper:

"Some day, not now. Oh, not now. Now would be too much. But some day, Fritz, if God will not deal too hardly with me, I—I shall be his, Fritz."

I was intent on my vision, not on hers. I wanted him King; she did not care what he was, so that he was hers, so that he should not leave her.