He saw the delicate color like the first flush of dawn overspread her face, and a light that had never shone for any other spring into her eyes.  All the hardships that he had endured, all the dangers that he had run were as nothing now.

“John,” she exclaimed, in a voice tremulous with fear for him, not for herself, “you must leave Zillenstein at once!  Your life is not safe here for a moment!”

“When I go you go with me,” he said.

They had spoken rapidly in whispers and not even Suzanne had noticed.  Accustomed now to the servants in the castle she had merely seen a young peasant bringing flowers from the prince to her mistress.  They had been brought before and there was nothing unusual about it.

“Tell the prince that I thank him,” said Julie, aloud, but in indifferent tones.

John bowed and walked back toward the horse, his heart beating hard with triumph and joy.

CHAPTER XI

THE EFFICIENT HOSTLER

When John Scott returned to the stables his pulses were still throbbing with joy and he trod the grass of the Elysian Fields.  Young love is pure and noble, a spontaneous emotion that has nothing in it of calculation, and the wild and strange setting of his romance merely served to deepen his feelings.

He was the young crusader again, a knight coming to rescue his lady from the hands of the infidels.  He had made the impossible possible.  He had seen her and spoken with her, and despite his peasant clothes and his position of a menial that he had willingly taken, she had known him at once.  He had seen the deep color flushing into her face and the light like the first arrow of dawn spring into her eyes, and he knew that he had not come in vain.

He put so much vigor into his work, and he whistled and sang, low but so joyously that the stolid Walther took notice.

“Why are you so happy, you Castel?” he asked.

“I’ve seen the sun, Herr Walther.”

“There is nothing uncommon about that.  The sun has risen every morning for a million years and more.”

“But not this sun, Herr Walther.  It never rose before and it’s the brightest and most glorious of them all.”

Walther looked up at the sun.  It was in truth bright, casting a golden glow over all the mountains, but he saw nothing new about it.

“It’s a fine sun, as you say,” he said, “but it’s the same as ever.  Ah, you’re French after all—­in blood, I mean, I don’t question your loyalty—­and you see things that are not.  Too much imagination, Castel.  Quit it.  It’s not wholesome.”

“But I’m enjoying it, Herr Walther.  Imagination is a glorious thing.  You see the same sun that I do in so far as our eyes are able to look upon it, but you do not see it in the same way.  It appears far more splendid and glorious to me than it does to you.  Our eyes are mirrors and mine reflect today with much more power and much more depth of color than yours do.”