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His countenance was less severe when he turned again toward the Baroness, and it smacked more of bewilderment.

“It is only my wife,” he said.

“And the Comte de Ch�teauroux,” said the Baroness.

There is no denying that their voices were somewhat lowered. The chill and frail beauty of the Grand Duchess was plainly visible from where they sat; to every sense a woman of snow, his Highness mentally decided, for her gown this evening was white and the black hair powdered; all white she was, a cloud-tatter in the moonlight: yet with the Comte de Ch�teauroux as a foil, his uniform of the Cuirassiers a big stir of glitter and color, she made an undeniably handsome picture; and it was, quite possibly, the Grand Duke’s æsthetic taste which held him for the moment motionless.

“After all–” he began, and rose.

“I am afraid that her Highness–” the Baroness likewise commenced.

“She would be sure to,” said the Grand Duke, and thereupon he sat down.

“I do not, however,” said the Baroness, “approve of eavesdropping.”

“Oh, if you put it that way–” agreed the Grand Duke, and he was rising once more, when the voice of de Ch�teauroux stopped him.

“No, not at any cost!” de Ch�teauroux; was saying; “I cannot and I will not give you up, Victoria!”

“–though I have heard,” said his Highness, “that the moonlight is bad for the eyes.” Saying this, he seated himself composedly in the darkest corner of the summer-house.

“This is madness!” the Grand Duchess said–“sheer madness.”

“Madness, if you will,” de Ch�teauroux persisted, “yet it is a madness too powerful and sweet to be withstood. Listen, Victoria,”–and he waved his hand toward the palace, whence music, softened by the distance, came from the lighted windows,–“do you not remember? They used to play that air at Staarberg.”

The Grand Duchess had averted her gaze from him. She did not speak.

He continued: “Those were contented days, were they not, when we were boy and girl together? I have danced to that old-world tune so many times–with you! And to-night, madame, it recalls a host of unforgettable things, for it brings back to memory the scent of that girl’s hair, the soft cheek that sometimes brushed mine, the white shoulders which I so often had hungered to kiss, before I dared–“

“Hein?” muttered the Grand Duke.

“We are no longer boy and girl,” the Grand Duchess said. “All that lies behind us. It was a dream–a foolish dream which we must forget.”

“Can you in truth forget?” de Ch�teauroux demanded,–“can you forget it all, Victoria?–forget that night a Gnestadt, when you confessed you loved me? forget that day at Staarberg, when we were lost in the palace gardens?”

“Mon Dieu, what a queer method!” murmured the Grand Duke. “The man makes love by the almanac.”

“Nay, dearest woman in the world,” de Ch�teauroux went on, “you loved me once, and that you cannot have quite forgotten. We were happy then–very incredibly happy,–and now–“

“Life,” said the Grand Duchess, “cannot always be happy.”

“Ah, no, my dear! nor is it to be elated by truisms. But what a life is this of mine,–a life of dreary days, filled with sick, vivid dreams of our youth that is hardly past as yet! And so many dreams, dear woman of my heart! in which the least remembered trifle brings back, as if in a flash, some corner of the old castle and you as I saw you there,–laughing, or insolent, or, it may be, tender. Ah, but you were not often tender! Just for a moment I see you, and my blood leaps up in homage to my dear lady. Then instantly that second of actual vision is over, I am going prosaically about the day’s business, but I hunger more than ever–“

“This,” said the Grand Duke, “is insanity.”

“Yet I love better the dreams of the night,” de Ch�teauroux went on; “for they are not made all of memories, sweetheart. Rather, they are romances which my love weaves out of multitudinous memories,–fantastic stories of just you and me that always end, if I be left to dream them out in comfort, very happily. For there is in these dreams a woman who loves me, whose heart and body and soul are mine, and mine alone. Ohé, it is a wonderful vision while it lasts, though it be only in dreams that I am master of my heart’s desire, and though the waking be bitter…! Need it be just a dream, Victoria?”