How Paul reached his room, he never knew. He was in an ecstasy--his
young blood surging through his veins in response to the leap of the
seething passions within.
Have you never felt it, Reader? If you have not, you had better lay
aside this book, for you will never, never understand what
followed--what _must_ follow, in the very nature of human hearts.
Fate once more had placed happiness in his grasp--should he fling it
from him? Never! never again! He remembered his mother and her great
love, as she had bade him.
This day, following as it did his mother's letter, had been a revelation
to him of the possibilities of life, and of his own capacity for
enjoying it. In one week, only one week more, he must take upon his
shoulders the burdens of a kingdom. Should he let a mistaken sense of
right and duty defraud him a second time? Was this barrier--which a
stronger or a weaker man would have brushed aside without a second
thought--to wreck his life, and Opal's? He laughed exultingly. His whole
soul was on fire, his whole body aflame.
Beyond the formality of the betrothal, Opal had not yet been bound to
the Count. She was not his--yet! She could not be Paul's wife--Fate had
made that forever impossible--but she should be _his_, as he knew she
already was at heart.
They loved, and was not love--everything!
He paced the floor in an excitement beyond his control. Opal should give
him, out of her life, one day--one day in the little hotel on the
Bürgenstock, where his mother and her lover had been so happy. They,
too, should be happy--as happy as two mating birds in a new-built
nest--for one day they would forget all yesterdays and all to-morrows.
He would make that one day as glorious and shadowless for her as a day
could possibly be made--one day in which to forget that the world was
gray--- one day which should live in their memories throughout all the
years to come as the one ray of sunshine in two bleak and dreary lives!
And tempted, as he admitted to himself, quite beyond all reason, he
swore by all that he held sacred to risk everything--brave
everything--for the sake of living one day in Paradise.
"We have a right to be happy," he said. "Everyone has a right to be
happy, and we have done no wrong to the world. Why should we two, who
have the capability of making so much of our lives and doing so much for
the world, as we might have, together--why should we be sentenced to the
misery of mere existence, while men and women far less worthy of
happiness enjoy life in its utmost ecstasy?"
One thing he was firmly resolved upon. Opal should not know his real
rank. She should give herself to Paul Zalenska, the man--not to Paul the
Prince! His rank should gloss over nothing--nothing--and for all she
knew now to the contrary, her future rank as Countess de Roannes was
superior to his own.
And then as silence fell about the little hotel, unbroken save by some
strolling musicians in the square near at hand who sent the most tender
of Swiss love-melodies out upon the evening air, Paul walked out to the
terrace, passed through the little gate, and reaching the balcony,
knocked gently but imperatively upon the door of the room that was once
his mother's.
The door was opened cautiously.
Paul stepped inside, and closed it softly behind him.