“Maria, I love you,” said the Chevalier.  “How I do love you!” He took her hands from his shoulders and pressed his forehead upon them.  She leaned forward, and in a voice so low it seemed her heart was whispering, not her mouth, she made her prayer.

“Say that you have no room in your thoughts except for me.  Say that you have no scrap of love—­” He dropped her hands and drew away; she caught him to her.  “No, no!  Say that you have no scrap of love to toss to the woman there in Innspruck!”

“Maria!” he exclaimed.

“Hush!” said she, with a woful smile.  “To-morrow you shall love her; to-morrow I will not ask your eyes to dwell on mine or your hand to quiver as it touches mine.  But to-night love no one but me.”

For answer he kissed her on the lips.  She took his head between her hands and gave the kiss back, gently as though her lips feared to bruise his, slowly as though this one moment must content her for all her life.  Then she looked at him for a little, and with a childish movement that was infinitely sad she laid his face side by side with hers so that his cheek touched hers.

“Shall I tell you my thought?” she asked.  “Shall I dare to tell you it?”

“Tell it me!”

“God has died to-night.  Hush!  Do not move!  Do not speak!  Perhaps the world will slip and crumble if we but stay still.”  And they remained thus cheek to cheek silent in the room, staring forward with eyes wide open and hopeful.  The very air seemed to them a-quiver with expectation.  They, too, had an expectant smile upon their lips.  But there was no crack of thunder overhead, no roar of a slipping world.

[Illustration:  “Cheek to cheek, silent in the room, staring forward with eyes wide open and hopeful.”—­Page 136.] The Chevalier was the first to move.

“But we are children,” he cried, starting up.  “Is it not strange the very pain which tortures us because we are man and woman should sink us into children?  We sit hoping that a miracle will split the world in pieces!  This is the Caprara Palace; Whittington drowses outside over his lantern; and to-morrow Gaydon rides with his passport northwards to Charles Wogan.”

The name hurt Maria Vittoria like a physical torture.  She beat her hands together with a cry, “I hate him!  I hate him!”

“Yet I have no better servant!”

“Speak no good word of him in my ears!  He robs me of you.”

“He risks his life for me.”

“I will pray that he may lose it.”

“Maria!”

The Chevalier started, thrilled and almost appalled by the violence of her passion.

“I do pray,” she cried.  “Every fibre in me tingles with the prayer.  Oh, I hate him!  Why did you give him leave to rescue her?”

“Could I refuse?  I did delay him; I did hesitate.  Only to-day Gaydon receives the passport, and even so I have delayed too long.  Indeed, Maria, I dare not think of the shame, the danger, her Highness has endured for me, lest my presence here, even for this farewell, should too bitterly reproach me.”