Page:Anthony Hope - The Kings Mirror.djvu/264

 had thought that she would like to be a queen. At that moment this new idea of her brought me pure relief. I suppose there were obvious moralizings to be done; it was also possible to take the matter to heart, as a tribute to my position at the cost of myself. I felt no soreness, and I did no moralizing. I was honestly and fully glad that for any reason under heaven she wished to marry me.

Moreover this touch of a not repulsive worldliness in her sapped some of my scruples. What I was doing no longer seemed sacrilege. She had one foot on earth already then, this pretty Elsa, lightly poised perhaps, and quite ethereal, yet in the end resting on this common earth of ours. She would get used to me, as William Adolphus put it, all the sooner. I took courage. The spirit of the scene gained some hold on me. I grew less repressed in manner, more ardent in looks. I lost my old desire not to magnify what I felt. The coquetry in her waged now an equal battle with her timidity.

"You're sure you like me?" she asked.

"Is it incredible? Have they never told you how pretty you are?"

She laughed nervously, but with evident pleasure. Her eyes were bright with excitement. I held out my hands, and she put hers into them. I drew her to me and kissed her lightly on the cheek. She shrank suddenly away from me.

"Don't be frightened," I said, smiling.

"I am frightened," she answered, with a look that seemed almost like defiance.

"Shall we say nothing about it for a little while?"

This proposal did not seem to attract her, or to touch the root of the trouble, if trouble there were.

"I must tell mother," she said.