“But to-night—­this risk you ran; you told me it was for a woman.”

“For a woman, yes.  For love of a woman, no, no, no!” he exclaimed with surprising violence.  Then he rose from his chair.

“But I have stayed my time,” said he, “you have never had a more grateful guest.  I beg you to believe it.”

Count Otto barely heard the words.  He was absorbed in the fanciful dreams born of many long solitary evenings, and like most timid and uncommunicative men he made his confidence in a momentary enthusiasm to a stranger.

“Koenigsmarck spoke for an hour, mentioning no names, so that I who from my youth have lived apart could not make a guess.  He spoke with a deal of passion; it seemed that one hour his life was paradise and the next a hell.  Even as he spoke he was one instant all faith and the next all despair.  One moment he was filled with his unworthiness and wonder that so noble a creature as a woman should bend her heart and lips from her heaven down to his earth.  The next he could not conceive any man should be such a witless ass as to stake his happiness on the steadiness of so manifest a weathercock as a woman’s favour.  It was all very strange talk; it opened to me, just as when a fog lifts and rolls down again, a momentary vision of a world of colours in which I had no share; and to tell the truth it left me with a suspicion which has recurred again and again, that all my solitary years over my books, all the delights which the delicate turning of a phrase, or the chase and capture of an elusive idea, can bring to one may not be worth, after all, one single minute of living passion.  Passion, Chevalier!  There is a word of which I know the meaning only by hearsay.  But I wonder at times, whatever harm it works, whether there can be any great thing without it.  But you are anxious to go forward upon your way.”

He again took up his lamp, and requesting Wogan to follow him, unlatched the window.  Wogan, however, did not move.

“I am wondering,” said he, “whether I might be yet deeper in your debt.  I left behind me a sword.”

Count Otto set his lamp down and took a sword from the corner of the room.

“I called it an ornament, and yet in other hands it might well prove a serviceable weapon.  The blade is of Spanish steel.  You will honour me by wearing it.”

Wogan was in two minds with regard to the Count.  On the one hand, he was most grateful; on the other he could not but think that over his books he had fallen into a sickly way of thought.  He was quite ready, however, to wear his sword; moreover, when he had hooked the hanger to his belt he looked about the room.

“I had a pistol,” he said carelessly, “a very useful thing is a pistol, more useful at times than a sword.”

“I keep one in my bedroom,” said the Count, setting the lamp down, “if you can wait the few moments it will take me to fetch it.”

Mr. Wogan was quite able to wait.  He was indeed sufficiently generous to tell Count Otto that he need not hurry.  The Count fetched the pistol and took up the lamp again.