The appeal was so earnest, so noble that honor swelled in his heart and came from his lips in this promise: 

“You may trust me, your Highness.  Your secret is worth a thousand-fold more than mine.  It is sacred with me.  The joy of my life has ended, but the happiness of knowing the truth will never die.  I shall remember that you love me—­yes, I know you do,—­and I shall never forget to love you.  I will not promise that I shall never speak of it again to you.  As I lie here, there comes to me a courage I did not know I could feel.”

“No, no!” she cried, vehemently.

“Forgive me!  You can at least let me say that as long as I live I may cherish and encourage the little hope that all is not dead.  Your Highness, let me say that my family never knows when it is defeated, either in love or in war.”

“The walls which surround the heart of a princess are black and grim, impenetrable when she defends it, my boasting American,” she said, smiling sadly.

“Yet some prince of the realm will batter down the wall and win at a single blow that which a mere man could not conquer in ten lifetimes.  Such is the world.”

“The prince may batter down and seize, but he can never conquer.  But enough of this!  I am the Princess of Graustark; you are my friend, Grenfall Lorry, and there is only a dear friendship between us,” she cried, resuming her merry humor so easily that he started with surprise and not a little displeasure.

“And a throne,” he added, smiling, how ever.

“And a promise,” she reminded him.

“From which I trust I may some day be released,” said he, sinking back, afflicted with a discouragement and a determination of equal power.  He could see hope and hopelessness ahead.

“By death!”

“No; by life!  It may be sooner than you think!”

“You are forgetting your promise already.”

“Your Highness’s pardon,” he begged.

They laughed, but their hearts were sad, this luckless American and hapless sovereign who would, if she could, be a woman.

“It is now three o’clock—­the hour when you were to have called to see me,” she said, again sitting unconcernedly before him in the window seat.  She was not afraid of him.  She was a princess.

“I misunderstood you, your highness.  I remembered the engagement, but it seems I was mistaken as to the time.  I came at three in the morning!”

“And found me at home!”

“In an impregnable castle, with ogres all about.”

XII

A WAR AND ITS CONSEQUENCES

Lorry was removed to another room before dinner, as she had promised.

After they had dined the two strangers were left alone for several hours.  Anguish regaled his friend with an enthusiastic dissertation on the charms of the Countess Dagmar, lady-in-waiting to the Princess.  In conclusion he said glowingly, his cigar having been out for half an hour or more because his energy had been spent in another direction.