He saw Julie’s face turn deadly pale.  Every particle of color was gone from it and her blue eyes stared at him as if he were one newly risen from the dead.  Then the color flushed back in a rosy tide and such a tide of gladness as he had never seen before in human eyes came into hers.

“You!  You!  Is it really you?” she cried.

John was once more the knightly young crusader.  No such moment had ever before come into his life.  His heart was full.  Triumph and joy were mingled there, and something over and beyond either.  In that passing flash he had read the light in her eyes, a light that he knew was only for him, but in the instant of supreme revelation he would take no advantage.  The manner as well as the spirit of the young crusader was upon him.

He knelt before her and taking one of her gloved hands in his kissed it.

“Yes, dearest Julie,” he said, “by some singular fortune or chance, or rather, I should call it, the will of God, I was chosen to bring you here, and I glory because I have fulfilled the trust.”

[Illustration:  “‘You!  You!  Is it really you?’ she cried”]

Suzanne, tall and dark, stood looking down at them.  Her grim features which relaxed so rarely relaxed now and her eyes were soft.  The young stranger from beyond the seas had proved after all that he was a man among men, and no Frenchwoman could resist a romance so strong and true in the face of all that war could do.

John felt Julie’s hand trembling in his, but she did not draw it away.  Her lashes were lowered a little now, but her gaze still rested upon him, soft yet confident and powerful.  He had believed in her courage.  He had believed that she would suffer no shock when she should see that he was the strange man who had been at the wheel, and his confidence was justified.

“And it was you who brought us up the mountain?” she said.

“The Prince of Auersperg himself chose me because I was a stranger and he did not wish anyone else in the castle to know where you were sent.”

He released her hand and rose.  The soft but strong gaze was still upon him, as if she were yet trying to persuade herself that it was reality.

“I felt all the time that some day we should leave the castle together,” she said, “but I did not dream that it was you who sat before me as we came up the mountain.”

“But it was,” said John, joyfully.  “I think Wharton himself would have complimented me on the way I drove the machine.  I have a letter in my pocket for Muller, the prince’s forester who lives here, but it seems that he is absent on other duty.”

“And then,” said the practical Suzanne, “it becomes us to take possession of the house at once.  Look forth, sir! how the storm beats!”

Through the open door they saw the snow driven past in sheets that seemed almost solid.  John handed the lantern to Suzanne and said: 

“Wait here a moment.”