“I have only said that I wanted to hear you say you had come to see me.  Is not that something for a woman’s vanity to value?  I am sorry you have presumed to misunderstand me.”  She was cold again, but he was not to be baffled.

“Then be a woman and forget that you are a princess until I tell you why I came,” he cried.

“I cannot!  I mean, I will not listen to you,” she said, glancing about helplessly, yet standing still within the danger circle.

“I came because I have thought of you and dreamed of you since the day you sailed from New York.  God, can I ever forget that day!”

“Please do not recall—­” she began, blushing and turning to the window.

“The kiss you threw to me?  Were you a princess then?” She did not answer, and he paused for a moment, a thought striking him which at first he did not dare to voice.  Then he blurted it out.  “If you do not want to hear me say these things, why do you stand there?”

“Oh,” she faltered.

“Don’t leave me now.  I want to say what I came over here to say, and then you can go back to your throne and your royal reserve, and I can go back to the land from which you drew me.  I came because I love you.  Is not that enough to drag a man to the end of the world?  I came to marry you if I could, for you were Miss Guggenslocker to me.  Then you were within my reach, but not now!  I can only love a princess!” He stopped because she had dropped to the couch beside him, her serious face turned appealingly to his, her fingers clasping his hands fiercely.

“I forbid you to continue—­I forbid you!  Do you hear?  I, too, have thought and dreamed of you, and I have prayed that you might come.  But you must not tell me that you love me-you shall not!”

“I only want to know that you love me,” he whispered.

“Do you think I can tell you the truth?” she cried.  “I do not love you!”

Before he had fairly grasped the importance of the contradictory sentences, she left his side and stood in the window, her breast heaving and her face flaming.

“Then I am to believe you do,” he groaned, after a moment.  “I find a princes and lose a woman!”

“I did not intend that you should have said what you have, or that I should have told you what I have.  I knew you loved me or you would not have come to me,” she said, softly.

“You would have been selfish enough to enjoy that knowledge without giving joy in return.  I see.  What else could you have done?  A princess!  Oh, I would to God you were Miss Guggenslocker, the woman I sought!”

“Amen to that!” she said.  “Can I trust you never to renew this subject?  We have each learned what had better been left unknown.  You understand my position.  Surely you will be good enough to look upon me ever afterward as a princess and forget that I have been a woman unwittingly.  I ask you, for your sake and my own, to refrain from a renewal of this unhappy subject.  You can see how hopeless it is for both of us.  I have said much to you that I trust you will cherish as coming from a woman who could not have helped herself and who has given to you the power to undo her with a single word.  I know you will always be the brave, true man my heart has told me you are.  You will let the beginning be the end?”