“When may I know?”

“I—­I can’t tell.”

“You told the King.”

“He seemed to need it so.”

“Don’t I need it?”

“I—­I can’t tell.”

He seemed discouraged, and as if he did not know what next to say.  They strolled in silence over to where she had been standing the night before when the King spoke to her.  From within the great house came the entrancingly sweet song of a world-famous soprano engaged to pour her liquid notes before the King.

Mary Alice stood very still, drinking it in.  When it ceased, she stole a look up at the bronzed face beside her; the light from a window in her far wing of the house fell full on that rugged face, and it looked very stern but also very sad.  Mary Alice’s heart, which had been exultant only a short while ago, began suddenly—­in one of those strange revulsions which all hearts know—­to ache indefinably.  This hour would probably be like those other brief hours in which he had shared her life.  To-morrow, or next day, he would be gone; and forever and forever the memory of these moments on the terrace, with the stars overhead and that exquisite song in their ears, would be coming back to taunt her unbearably.

She made up her mind that before he went out of her life again, she would tell him the Secret; so that at least, wherever he went, however far from him the rest of her way through life might lie, they would always have that thought in common; and whenever it came to help him, as it must, he would think of her.

Timidly she laid a hand upon his arm.  He had been far away, following the trail of long, long thoughts, and her touch recalled him sharply.

“What is it?” he asked.

“I—­I want to tell you the Secret.”

“I don’t think I want to know,” he answered, rather shortly.

“Why—­why——­” Mary Alice faltered.  Her lips quivered and her eyes began to fill.  “I—­I must go in,” she said.

He put out a hand to detain her, but either she did not see it in the dark, or else she eluded it; for in a moment she was gone, across the terrace towards the lighted French windows of the rooms of state.

How she managed to get through those next few minutes until she could find the Duchess and ask to be excused, Mary Alice never knew.  All of her that was capable of feeling or caring about anything seemed to have left this part of her that wore the Duchess’s lovely white gown and scarf of silver tissue, and to be out on the dark terrace under the pale star beams, with a tall young man who spoke bitterly.  This girl in the sheen of white and silver to whom the King was speaking kindly, was some one unreal and ghostly who acted like a real live girl, but was not.

As she hurried along the great corridors towards her room in the far wing, Mary Alice felt that she could hardly wait to get off these trappings of state; to get back to her old simple self again and bury her head in her pillow and cry and cry.  She wished with all her heart for Godmother.  But most of all she was sick for home, for Mother, and the unchanging sitting-room.