He looked at his hands and saw the black stains from the charred letter, last evidence of the crime against the state.  A tender light came to his eyes, a great lump struggled to his throat, and he kissed the sooty spots, murmuring her name again and again.  How lonely he was! how cold and cheerless his cage!  For the first time he began to appreciate the real seriousness of his position.  Up to this time he had regarded it optimistically, confident of vindication and acquittal.  His only objection to imprisonment grew out of annoyance and the mere deprivation of liberty.  It had not entered his head that he was actually facing death at close range.  Of course, it had been plain to him that the charges were serious, and that he was awkwardly situated, but the true enormity of his peril did not dawn upon him until freedom was offered in such a remarkable manner.  He grew cold and shuddered instinctively as he realized that his position was so critical that the princess had deemed it necessary to resort to strategic measures in order to save him from impending doom.  Starting to his feet he paced the floor, nervousness turning to dread, dread to terror.  He pounded on the door and cried aloud.  Oh, if he could but bring back those kindly messengers!

Exhausted, torn by conflicting emotions, he at last dropped to the bed and buried his face in his arms, nearly mad with the sudden solitude of despair.  He recalled her dear letter—­the tender, helping hand that had been stretched out to lift him from the depths into which he was sinking.  She had written—­he could see the words plainly—­that his danger was great; she could not endure life until she knew him to be safely outside the bounds of Graustark.  His life was dear to her, and she would preserve it by dishonoring her trust.  Then she had unfolded her plan of escape, disjointedly, guiltily, hopelessly.  In one place near the end, she wrote:  “You have done much more for me than you know, so I pray that God may be good enough to let me repay you so far as it lies within my power to do so.”  In another place she said:  “You may trust my accomplices, for they love me, too.”  An admission unconsciously made, that word “too.”

But she was offering him freedom only to send him away without granting one moment of joy in her presence.  After all, with death staring him in the face, the practically convicted murderer of a prince, he knew he could not have gone without seeing her.  He had been ungrateful, perhaps, but the message he had sent to her was from his heart, and something told him that it would give her pleasure.

A key turned suddenly in the lock, and his heart bounded with the hope that it might be some one with her surrender in response to his ultimatum.  He sat upright and rubbed his swollen eyes.  The door swung open, and a tall prison guard peered in upon him, a sharpeyed, low-browed fellow in rain coat and helmet.  His lantern’s single unkind eye was turned menacingly toward the bed.