“While you eat, Chevalier, I will mix you a cordial,” said he, and he set about his hospitable work.  “You ask me why I so readily opened my window to you.  It was because I took you for Koenigsmarck himself come back as mysteriously as he disappeared.  I did not think that if he came back now his hair would be as white, his shoulders as bent, as mine.  Indeed, one cannot think of Koenigsmarck except as a youth.  You had the very look of him as you stood in the light upon the lawn.  You have, if I may say so, something of his gallant bearing and something of his grace.”

Wogan could have heard no words more distressing to him at this moment.

“Oh, stop, sir.  I pray you stop!” he cried out violently, and noting the instant he had spoken the surprise on Count Otto’s face.  “There, sir, I give you at once by my discourtesy an example of how little I merit a comparison with that courtly nobleman.  Let me repair it by telling you, since you are willing to hear, of my night’s adventure.”  And as he ate he told his story, omitting the precise object of his journey, the nature of the letter which he had burned, and any name which might give a clue to the secret of his enterprise.

The Count Otto listened with his eyes as well as his ears; he hung upon the words, shuddering at each danger that sprang upon Wogan, exclaiming in wonder at the shift by which he escaped from it, and at times he looked over towards his books with a glance of veritable dislike.

“To feel the blood run hot in one’s veins, to be bedfellows with peril, to go gallantly forward hand in hand with endeavour,” he mused and broke off.  “See, I own a sword, being a gentleman.  But it is a toy, an ornament; it stands over there in the corner from day to day, and my servants clean it from rust as they will.  Now you, sir, I suppose—­”

“My horse and my sword, Count,” said Wogan, “when the pinch comes, they are one’s only servants.  It would be an ill business if I did not see to their wants.”

The old man was silent for a while.  Then he said timidly, “It was for a woman, no doubt, that you ran this hazard to-night?”

“For a woman, yes.”

The Count folded his hands and leaned forward.

“Sir, a woman is a strange inexplicable thing to me.  Their words, their looks, their graceful, delicate shapes, the motives which persuade them, the thoughts which their eyes conceal,—­all these qualities make them beings of another world to me.  I do envy men at times who can stand beside them, talk with them without fear, be intimate with them, and understand their intricate thoughts.”

“Are there such men?” asked Wogan.

“Men who love, such as Count Koenigsmarck and yourself.”

Wogan held up his hand with a cry.

“Count, such men, we are told, are the blindest of all.  Did not Koenigsmarck prove it?  As for myself, not even in that respect can I be ranked with Koenigsmarck.  I am a mere man-at-arms, whose love-making is a clash of steel.”