"For God's sake don't play with me," I said, "not that you are doing
that. You have met Her--Miss Morse I mean, my Juanita?"
"Prince, she has deigned to give me her confidence in some degree. I do
my work in the wonderful library that Mr. Morse has built. It's a great
hall, full of the rarest volumes; and there are long windows from which
one can look down upon London and gaze beyond the City to where the
wrinkled sea beats around the coast. And, day by day, in her loneliness,
the Fairest of Maidens has come to this high place and taken a book of
poems, sat in the embrasure, and stared down at the world below."
He raised a thin hand and held it upright. It was so transparent that
the light of a candle behind turned it to blood red.
"Let my presumptuous desires be forever silent," he chanted. "'East is
east and west is west,' and I erred gravely. But, worship is worship,
and worship is sacrifice."
I could hardly speak, my voice was hoarse, his words had given me such a
picture of Juanita up there in the clouds.
"Prince--"
"I am not a Prince, I only have a very ordinary title. If you know
England, you understand what a baronet is."
"I know England. Prince, your Princess is waiting for you and sighing
out her heart that you have not come to her."
I leapt to my feet and swore a great oath that made the attic room
ring.
"_You mean?_" I shouted.
"Prince, the Lily of all the lilies, the Rose of all the roses, alone,
distraught, another Ophelia--no, say rather Juliet with her nurse--has
honored me with the story of her love. She never told me whom she longed
for, but I knew that it was some one down in the world."