“It is because of this curious presentiment of mine that I write down for thee, my baby—­my baby Paul—­this story of thy father and thy mother, and the great love that gave thee to the world.  It is but right, before thou comest into thy kingdom, that thou shouldst know—­thou and thou alone—­the secret of thy birth, that thou mayst carry with thee into the big world thy birthright—­the sweetness of a supreme love.”

Then briefly, but as completely and vividly as the story could be written, she pictured for him the beautiful idyl she and her lover had lived, here in this very spot, two-and-twenty years ago; told him, in her own quaint words, of the beautiful boy she had found in Lucerne, that glorious May so long ago, and how it had been her caprice to waken him, until the caprice had become her love, and afterwards her life; told him how she had seen the danger, and had warned the boy to leave Lucerne, while there was yet time, but that he had answered that he would chance the hurt, because he wished to live, and he knew that only she could teach him how—­only she could prove to him the truth of her own words, that life was love!

She told how weary and unhappy she had been, picturing with no light fingers the misery of her life—­married when a mere child to a vicious husband—­and all the insults and brutality she was forced to endure; and then, for contrast, told him tenderly how she had been young again for this boy she had found in Lucerne.

There was not one little detail of that idyllic dream of love omitted from the picture she drew for him of these two—­and their sublime three weeks of life on the Buergenstock with their final triumphant, but bitter culmination in Venice.  She told him of what they had been pleased to call their wedding—­the wedding of their souls—­nor did she seek to lessen the enormity of their sin.

She touched with the tenderest of fingers upon the first dawn in their hearts of the hope of the coming of a child—­a child who would hold their souls together forever—­a child who would immortalize their love till it should live on, and on, and on, through countless generations perhaps—­till who could say how much the world might be benefited and helped just because they two had loved!

And then she told him—­sweetly, as a mother should—­of all her dreams for her son—­all her hopes and ambitions that were centered around his little life—­the life of her son who was to redeem the land—­told him how ennobled and exalted she had felt that this strong, manly Englishman was her lover, and how sure she had been that their child would have a noble mind.

“Thou wilt think my thoughts, my baby Paul—­thou wilt dream my dreams, and know all my ambitions and longings.  Thou canst not be ignoble or base, for thou wert born of a love that makes all other unions mean and low and sordid by comparison.”

Then, after telling, as only she could tell it, of the bitterness of that parting in Venice, when, because of the threatening danger, from which there was no escape, she left her lover to save his life, she went on: