“You will, then, see her again?” asked Cecil while folding the letters.  “You will render the parting more painful!”

“I will it!” said Paulo, with decision, and, taking the letters, he left the room with a firm and resolute step.

He found Natalie in her room.  She did not hear him coming, and thus did not turn to receive him.  She was sitting motionless at the window and dejectedly looking out into the garden, her head supported by her hand.

The events of the previous evening had made a great change in her.  She now felt older, more experienced, more earnest.  A dark shadow had passed over her sun-bright happiness, a dark power had threateningly approached her; the seriousness of life had been suddenly unfolded to her and had brushed off the ether-dust of harmless and joyful peace from her childish soul.  The happy child had become a conscious maiden, and new thoughts, new feelings had sprung up within her.  The first tears of sorrow had, with a mighty creative power, called all these slumbering blossoms of her heart into existence and activity, and her unconscious feelings had become conscious thoughts.

But what had not happened, what had she not experienced and felt since last evening?  First, had not a new happiness broken in upon her, had she not now a name, was she not a princess?  Then, had she not achieved a triumph—­a triumph in the presence of Corilla?  But then, also, how many desillusions had she not experienced in a few hours?  How had her heart been cooled by the rich flow of words in Corilla’s poesy!  Her whole soul had languished for the acquaintance of a poetess, and she had heard only a rhymed work of art.  And then the last terrible event!  Why had they wished to murder her?  Who were her unknown enemies, and why had she enemies?

“I should have been dead had he not rescued me!” murmured she, and her lovely face was illuminated by a sunny smile.  “Yes, without Carlo I should have been lost—­I have to thank him for my life!  Oh,” said she then aloud, “to him therefore belongs my existence, and for every joy I am yet capable of feeling I am indebted to him, my friend Carlo!  Ah, how shall I ever be able to reward him for all this happiness?”

And while she was thus speaking, Count Paulo, pale and silent, stood behind her; she saw him not, and after a pause she continued:  “How strange it is!  To-day, when I think of him, my heart beats as never before, and I feel in it something like heavenly bliss, and yet at the same time like profound sorrow.  Ah, what can it be, and why do I, to-day, think only of him?  I could weep because he does not yet come!  How strange it all is, and at the same time how sad!  Seems it not that I love Carlo more than any one else, more even than Paulo, who formerly was the dearest to me?  How is it now, and am I, then, truly so ungrateful to Paulo?”

Count Paulo still stood behind her, pale and silent.  A painfully ironic smile flitted over his face, and he thought:  “I came to ask a question, and Natalie has already given me the answer before I had time to ask it.  Perhaps it is better thus.  I have now nothing to ask!”