BOOK SIX

CHAPTER ONE

Three wide terraces sloped downwards towards the sea, thrusting forward into the waters. On the centre one of these terraces, beneath a straw-thatched roof supported on bamboo canes, lay Olivia in a long wicker chair, her light-coloured dress contrasting with the brown-and-white fur stretched out beneath her, which she had thrust here and there, as fancy dictated, into the interstices of the wickerwork. She had turned away from the light, and was gazing eastward, where the sky was aflame with the reflected glow of the sunset. Then, from her eyrie, she looked down towards the bay and the little grey town on its shores, and it was as if all the legendary lore that had grown up around the castle of her Dalmatian forefathers in the course of centuries were gathered into one vast legend, embodied in herself alone. Her mien was threatening rather than pensive; her eyes domineering and gloomy as she stared at the huddled houses below, which sheltered a hundred poverty-stricken fisherfolk—who, dumb and sullen, continued to tolerate the yoke of servitude imposed by her ancestors. She felt very much alone; but she was not alone. A girl of sixteen was sitting near by on a low stool. Her hair was golden like Olivia's, but not with so dazzling a sheen; her eyes had the tranquil look of unawakened maidenhood, her lips were full, but innocent; she looked like a young madonna, entrancing with the promise of womanhood. Her hands were clasped behind her head, and her eyes were fixed on the western sky where the colours lingered, though the sun had set. Without a desire in her heart, she sat contemplating the fiery interplay of sky and sea, merely enjoying the spectacle before it vanished, gratifying the natural instinct of her youth. But the big woman's gaze was full of anger as the evening closed around them.

Maria, who was almost young enough to be Olivia's daughter, had been reading aloud and a book lay within reach of her hand. It was a dishevelled and forlorn little object, as its pages fluttered in the breeze now blowing from the sea. Ever since Gregor's death had given her back her freedom, and had simultaneously condemned her to a life of solitude once more, Olivia had taken to reading again; yet she harboured a peculiar kind of hostility within her against the books of her own choice. Her searching, restless heart, wearied with the habits of her class, found no comfort in the tale of the doings of imaginary characters. She had hoped to read studies of free people, but found that their lives, too, were involved in inextricable tangles.

Olivia had returned to her ancestral hall with the coming of spring, and her mother (a worldly and vigorous lady) had started for Rome two days after the daughter's return, intending to enjoy a few weeks of society life. Olivia had herself proposed the journey to her mother in one of her letters, hoping thereby to shorten the period of their life together that summer.

So long as she had the old castle to herself Olivia found it a beautiful refuge. But when her mother took it into her head to fill it with Dalmatian nobility (as she purposed to do this year with a special end in view) the place became intolerable. To dream away the hot days lazing on the broad terraces, very slightly disturbed by her son's little friends who came and went; to take a leisurely bathe in the blue waters of the bay; to lie about a great deal; in the morning to gaze westward, and as day drew to an end to turn and contemplate the eastern sky; occasionally to read a strange and fascinating book; it was thus she had thought to pass her time till the end of June, undisturbed, save for the company of this young niece whose quiet ways she loved, and whose gentle fingers proved to be strong and supple when, seated at the piano, she would play a fugue of Bach or a chaconne. And when on retiring to bed Olivia kissed the girl good-night, she would inhale the subtle aroma of womanly locks, and feel her pulses stir uneasily in never-satisfied expectation.

The bay was usually calm; from time to time fishing boats would furrow its waters, trailing the long nets homeward with the morning catch; twice a week the steamer from Trieste would put in to shore, or, if by chance the sea was agitated, the captain would send the dinghy instead, for every one eagerly awaited the mail-bag. These afternoons Olivia was disinclined to spend out of doors, for her untamed, undisciplined nature resented having to wait and to keep a lookout, and the steamer never arrived at a definite hour. Every other day in the week she could lie on the terrace in perfect security, knowing that nothing was likely to arrive from the outer world and establish a claim upon her against her will.

It was, therefore, with a feeling of alarm rather than of joy that she now saw, rounding the point in the gloaming, the nose of a vessel, which soon revealed itself to be a white ship. She called softly to the girl beside her:

"Maria."

Startled by this unusual interruption of the silence which she knew her aunt loved, the young girl swung round, and, as she turned, she, too, caught sight of the vessel.

"A ship," she cried, "a white ship! It is not one of ours—and she's turning round!"

"What do you mean?"

"She's changing her course, she's making for land, they are going to come ashore!"

The girl ran to the railing.

Olivia, too, rose and moved towards the edge of the terrace, but before she reached it the voice of her little son came to her from below, calling eagerly up to her and her companion.

"Mamma! Maria! There's a cutter in our bay. I'll run down to the harbour, I must see it close...."

The household bestirred itself, there was much talking and guessing, and when, half an hour later, a sailor under Clemens's somewhat imperious leadership handed Olivia a note, she guessed at once who had landed on the shores of her little realm.

"My dear Countess, Prince Eduard was informed while we were in Venice that you had returned home. The 'Excelsior' is lying in your bay, but we still have steam up, so that you may feel quite at liberty to say if our advent is inopportune. In that case we will run up a flag in salute, its message being: Au revoir. If, however, we shall not be a burden upon you or upon the princess, your mother, we can be with you in an hour.

"SCHERER"

They had planned to stay a couple of days but to make the yacht their headquarters as far as sleeping and feeding were concerned, for they could imagine the confusion the unexpected arrival of five guests would cause in this sleepy little household. Scherer, even as he proposed this arrangement, had secretly hoped the party would veto it, for he would willingly have entered upon more commodious quarters than the yacht could offer. Since that early morning talk as they lay outside Leucas his spirit had been casting new and ever renewed circles around Diana, and when, two evenings ago, the prince had paired off in so determined a manner with her in the gondola, Scherer had resolutely tightened the net. He felt his senses more and more stirred as he perceived that she and the prince were drawing together. Kyril's silent observation had the effect of making her appear more desirable than ever. He had been rather surprised when both Eduard and Kyril acquiesced in his proposal, and could not help wondering whether they, too, had secret fears of what the freer intercourse ashore might entail, and had therefore elected to remain together on the yacht.

The meeting at the castle was as natural and simple as could be; it seemed as if they had all been parted for no more than a couple of weeks. That Olivia's mother was away made the company feel more at ease; and Maria, to whom all of them were strangers, immediately made friends with Wilhelm, who, at the very first handshake, laid his heart at her feet. Being the youngest of the grown-ups, he was seized upon by Clemens, who was attracted to a man whom his elders called a poet, and with childlike impatience the boy insisted on dragging Wilhelm away from the rest of the party. Thus it was that Maria, Clemens, and Wilhelm sped gaily away, a trio of youthful freshness and innocence.

Kyril and Olivia felt hostile towards one another at their first encounter. Reserved, cold, and ardent, as they both were at bottom, they exercised that inimical attraction for each other which serves as a bond between persons who temperamentally mistrust happy encounters. It was not in error, but by malice aforethought, that the Russian insisted on addressing her as "Your Highness," as if he were resolved not to let her forget her royal descent. Defiance severed these two from the rest of the cheerful company, and welded them together against their will. The situation at once became apparent. During one of the first walks in the park, whose shelving terraces had been cut out of the mountain face, and along which little paths zigzagged up the steep acclivity, Scherer had said to the prince:

"Have you noticed? The countess, too, never laughs."

"Had she not been born in a castle, our Russian friend would find a way to make her open her lips. He'd only have to show his own fine set of teeth!"

"And all this is yours," exclaimed Wilhelm with the gracious gesture of a king of balladry, embracing in the sweep of his arm the whole of Dalmatia. He was flanked on either side by Maria and Clemens, the three of them dancing lightly along well ahead of the others. "And to think we can explore the whole place to our hearts' content! Are there many quails and lizards? Let's have a hunt! Now!"

"It's getting too dark," said Maria demurely, although she would have loved to begin the search at once. Clemens was quick to feel how he was to deport himself in respect of the other two.

"We have some with blue heads," he said, as if speaking of his subjects. "They live in our grottoes above the seashore. It's an awfully difficult climb to get to them, but I've climbed up twice, with Giro."

"Let's take Giro along with us tomorrow morning," suggested Wilhelm, wondering who Giro might be.

"I will order him to be at the Rocco Grande at six o'clock without fail," said Clemens grandiloquently.

"He'll not be back from the fishing grounds at six," put in Maria.

"When we have guests, he does not need to go fishing," said Clemens decisively.

Diana, at the outset, had joined Kyril and Olivia in the dark avenue of ancient yews. But the stuffiness under the thick arches of the trees and the oppressive silence of her companions made her break away into a gayer atmosphere. Thus it was that she had overheard the amusing braggadocio of the little boy who was the son of her dead friend. She sought some likeness to his father in the lad's countenance, and, drawing him towards her, said, swinging the hand he had clasped in hers to and fro:

"But what shall we do if there's nothing to eat, Clemens?"

The boy, hitherto absorbed in Wilhelm, whose droll ways attracted and pleased him greatly, had not taken any notice of his mother's other friends. Now, hearing himself directly addressed, he looked up at Diana, and suddenly recognized her as a lady who had come to tea with his mother at the embassy. And yet his recollection of her was somewhat blurred, for two years had passed since then.

"We have heaps of fish, you know. A whole lot of fish in the larder." Torn between perplexity and arrogance, he lied with the utmost assurance. Then adroitly changing the subject: "D'you know I've got a boat! Have you seen my boat?"

He pulled vigorously at the lower ends of his short breeks as if to make trousers out of them—had he not besought his grandmother for a year and more to allow him to wear trousers? Only since his mother's return had she prevailed upon the princess to concede the boy's urgent request. The trousers had been ordered, but they were a long time coming, and here were these strangers—of course they chose today for their visit—and he was still in shorts. Was it any wonder this beautiful lady should address him by name? Clemens, indeed! Just as if he were a kid!

Diana was struck by the lad's question: Have you seen my boat? Were not those the very words Gregor had spoken, Clemens's father, so cheekily and gaily, so wilfully and yet so shyly? She sensed instinctively that the boy wished her to treat him no longer as a child; yet she wanted him precisely to give her a child's trust, and not the homage of a youth, since he was not yet old enough for that.

"Where is your boat? Ah, of course, it'll be at the landing-stage, near the 'Excelsior'!"

"Is that the name of your yacht? The 'Excelsior'?"

"Yes. But it belongs to Herr Scherer."

"Then you are not—I thought..."

"No, I am not his wife; what made you think so?"

"It just looked as if you must be, when you arrived."

"His instinct makes him astute," thought Diana; "for if I were the wife of any man in our party, surely Scherer is the most likely mate."

"Just give me a good look, Clemens," she said; "see if you can't recognize who I am."

She stopped in the middle of the path, and the youngster turned face about. They had come to a bend in the path, and while they stood thus inspecting one another, the other walkers had room to pass. Wilhelm and Maria went slowly by, and Diana heard the poet say: "We shall probably cruise about for another week, but I can land wherever I please...."

"That would be jolly," answered Maria.

Then Clemens was speaking.

"Yes, perhaps I do, but I'm not sure," and he fidgeted from one foot to the other. "Weren't you at the embassy once when my father was still alive?"

The boy no longer says Papa as in those days, thought Diana. Death and fate have turned Gregor into Father! Ah, those were Gregor's very eyes, the ne'er-do-well, the deceiver.

She forgot to answer.

"Park with groups," she suddenly heard the prince say, for he and Scherer had now reached the bend where she and the boy were standing. But she sensed that in his heart he was saying: Even today, through the medium of the son, that man's image is still alive in her heart—ineradicable.

"Yes," she found herself answering, "yes, I was at your house once. And now, shall we go and find your mother? How do you like that man over there."

"That is Prince Eduard. He used to be with us at the embassy." The child spoke as if he were commending a bailiff to her attention.

"No, not that one. I mean the man who is walking with the countess."

Clemens, who had been feeling embarrassed by the turn the conversation had taken, was relieved to find that it was Wilhelm Diana was referring to. His tone became livelier on the instant.

"He ought to remain here with us. He's just the man we want, for he's never shy, and he isn't so very old, and I'm sure he's not a nobleman."

His choice of words, his tone, the gesture with which he smoothed his hair, all were reminiscent of Gregor, Gregor as he must have been before he had earned the nickname "mad Münsterberg." "Because he's never shy ... and I'm sure he's not a nobleman." Diana smiled.

Meanwhile Olivia and Kyril had come to a standstill. The countess had an innate repugnance to doing the honours of her ancestral home, to showing guests round in the approved manner of an obliging hostess; while Kyril was not one to ask the questions appropriate to his rôle as guest; they had, therefore, strolled along in silence ever since Diana had cut herself loose from their company. One question only had dropped from Kyril's lips:

"You know Fräulein Wassilko?"

To which Olivia had answered:

"Yes, I know her."

Her velvety alto came as a beautiful counterpart to his deep baritone.

But that was as far as they got, and these two, who so heartily disdained the conventions of society, were grateful to each other for such abstinence. Now, however, they had reached the end of the winding path, and had before them a series of steps and terraces upon which Olivia was unwilling to embark until the rest of the party had rejoined her. Negligent hostess though she was, even she felt it might not be seemly to proceed farther without at least pointing out the most hoary of the ancestral towers to her guests, for this was always the culminating point of interest to strangers. Every one was now assembled on the green before the walls, and Clemens saved his mother the trouble of speaking by acting as guide, pattering a few dates and names, without much cohesion in the tale he was telling. Scherer's accurate mind rebelled against such vagueness, and he insisted on more precise information, endeavouring to disentangle the stories of two knights, and in the end turning amicably to Kyril who had been listening the while with an expression of superlative contempt to the confused narration.

"After all, my dear Doctor, we cannot unmake the events by denying them, any more than we can take what beauty there is in them away by being cynical," said Scherer in conciliatory vein.

"All superfluous," commented Kyril dryly.

"I find this giant growth of ivy wholly charming," said the prince, who always came to the rescue with banter when a situation threatened to become too romantic. "And so far as the robber forefathers of Master Clemens are concerned, whose history has just been told us with so much lucidity and interest, they were at bottom no worse than any of our own ancestors—unless, of course, Dr. Sergievitch can prove the contrary."

"I shall have great-grandchildren," said the Russian; "I have no ancestors."

"Your ambition, then, is to be an ancestor yourself?"

"My grandchildren will have to forget me, just as I have forgotten my forbears. Deeds alone are lasting, not names, nor pictures."

"Simplicity personified: no oil paintings, no photographs," snapped the prince.

"Deeds?" The clear voice broke into the conversation like a clarion call. "Did these robber knights, then, perform no deeds?" It was Diana who spoke, coldly and challengingly.

"Nothing but adventures," retorted Kyril, from the opposite side of the circle the company had grouped itself into. His manner equalled hers for coldness, and he frowned as he spoke. "Those who played the vagabond in their day, like these Dalmatian nobles, without an idea in their heads, may serve as forefathers to a line of descendants and have the memory of their deeds preserved in an ancestral tower. But we, today, do not wish to work merely for a castle or for a family. We are working for the whole of humanity, Fräulein Wassilko."

"Car tel est notre plaisir!" Diana tossed the phrase across the circle, as if she were desirous of unveiling the inner meaning of his words by the quotation of a tyrant's dictum.

She turned on her heel, and the assembly broke up into groups, continuing down the steps and the terraces which led to the inhabited parts of the castle. Maria, somewhat alarmed at the asperity in Diana's tone, looked up at Wilhelm inquiringly: "Who is—the young lady?"

"I don't know," answered Wilhelm humbly. "In the end she always comes out victor."

Clemens marched along at their side, cudgelling his brains to remember which of the French kings had said those words. "I read about him only the other day," the boy said to himself. "In my history book.... Who could it have been?"

Olivia followed with Scherer.

"What concern of ours are the deeds of these robbers?" she asked gloomily. "Far better were it to be descended from peasant forefathers."

"It's precisely because he is the son of a peasant stock, that this Russian is so arrogant."

"And he is really a bandit," chimed in the prince who was following close at their heels in company with Diana.

"The Russian?"

"The knight!"

"But this Russian can't be allowed to play the high priest and cast my life in my teeth!" Olivia spoke so acrimoniously that the prince felt he must do something to conciliate her. With deliberate mendacity he shouldered the Russian's implied blame, as he said:

"His reproaches were aimed at us, not at you."

Diana, amazed at such a friendly deception coming from Eduard, turned to him radiantly, asking:

"How now, prince, do you mean to tell us that you, too, have had adventures?"

CHAPTER TWO

By the time they had returned next day from a ramble along the cliffs, Wilhelm had completely won over the heart of the boy, while Maria had conquered his own. A youth with a taste for adventure, inclined to search out the bizarre and the unfamiliar in nature and in man—this native of the South German highlands, born far from the sea, had during his first sea voyage gained acquaintance with some of the marvels of sea life, and (immune to the conventional pleasures of a voyage) had adapted himself to what conformed with his own predisposition. Having read in a story of sea life something about great lizards, he felt sure that they would have their habitat on the very coast where fate had now beguiled him. And in truth they were there where he expected to find them. It was as if a benevolent deity were unwilling to disappoint the young innocent in any of his hopes.

Indeed, Wilhelm was never disappointed. His youth had been passed alternately in the company of artists, of persons temporarily visiting the town, and of the peasants in his village at home, the peasant folk from whom he had sprung. He had never made any claims on life, for his wishes were visionary ones, incapable of realization in the world of every day. Half musician, and half poet, he wandered penniless through life and through many a countryside. One day he would rise from board with tourists in Florence, for his charming personality and a talent for acting as guide often made him one of a cheerful company for weeks at a stretch; the next day he would find hospitable welcome in a peasant's shanty at Carreggi, because he had sat down to teach the cottar's children to play the lute. He was usually deferential where women were concerned, so long as they were not ugly or old; and he was content if he could merely stroke a gloved hand while driving along in a carriage. But with English girls, who wanted all they could get from love without running any of the risks, he was not backward; indeed he was more cruel at times than he realized, for he would indite little poems full of innuendoes and ambiguities, which of an evening he read aloud to the parents and admirers of the young ladies. Back again in his native hills, he had no scruples in passing the night with a village maid, for he had a nice appreciation of the different spheres into which his birth and upbringing brought him.

Maria made a strong appeal to his nature, partly because she was still almost a child, but also because of her maidenliness. He toyed with these two aspects with delicate hands, and found Clemens a useful buffer in his manipulations. The lad himself was wont to feel that he and the girl were much of an age, but since Wilhelm, who was their senior, made proposals which in the ordinary course Clemens would have disdained as childish and lacking in dignity, the boy was willing to lend himself to his guest's suggestions lest, by refusing, he should appear babyish. Maria, on the other hand, so recently emerging from her childhood, was thrown back into that period by these light-hearted games; she lent herself agreeably to the stranger's will, telling herself it was all a huge joke, and Wilhelm's homage no more than that of a nice boy. So it was that the three of them crept in and out of damp caves, and the imp in Wilhelm so arranged matters that shoes and stockings had to be discarded, and that he should give a hand to the girl as they scrambled barefoot over the stones. Maria blushed, and that was balm to Wilhelm's heart. Clemens grasped the significance of no more than a part of this by-play; but he understood enough to make him react in boyish fashion. He would try to frighten her by suddenly disappearing—but he never stayed so long away as to give Wilhelm time to snatch a kiss. The knight in Clemens and his position as heir to these estates and as cousin made him fully conscious of his responsibilities.

That same forenoon Diana sat with Olivia in the spacious sitting-room, a square, vaulted chamber in one of the towers, giving from three sides on to the sea, but with its windows usually shuttered in conformity with the countess's preference for a dim light. Wanton sunbeams, however, defied her precautions, and took advantage of every crack and hole in the blue painted wood to send their radiant shafts across the darkness—a symbol of her own soul, as Olivia liked to think.

Leaning on her elbow as was her habit, her limbs stretched out on the wide ottoman, Olivia looked over to where Diana sat. Her ardent eyes burned with increasing fire, the longer she was condemned to gaze upon the arena of the passions. These two women had little use for the small change of conversation.

"You are quite brown, Diana; and yet you spent the whole winter in town, cooped up in rooms."

"It's the sea. I've been three weeks cruising."

"In twenty years, living upon this coast, I remained white."

"And is it not lovelier to be white and to have golden hair?"

"Atalanta!"

Olivia sank back upon the divan, gazing up towards the vaulted ceiling, for she wanted to call forth again the vision of the Diana she had seen that evening in Berlin, a vision which had seemed to express the fullest possibilities of the young woman's being. But to conjure up this picture she must not have Diana's actual form before her eyes.

"To be able to personify a goddess," she murmured, "to discover thus early one's own essential shape, and to be able to fill out its structure unto completion.... O blessed freedom...."

Diana was thinking: "How fiercely she strives and seeks; yet she is excluded from the realm of enjoyment so soon as her dreams become reality!"

"Have not you, too, since then gained something of freedom?" Diana asked.

With unwonted alacrity, Olivia replied passionately:

"Not as freedom! They all have a home; Maria, her hopes; my mother, this castle; Scherer, his newspapers; the Russian, his ideas; and Gregor—well, he wavered between deeds and adventures, and was at home in both. But you have chosen the world! Yes, you, Diana, among all the persons I have met, you alone are worthy to regard the great dome of the firmament (at which I have so often gazed as at something vacuous and inimical) as the roof of your ancestral home. That is why you are so fond of the stars!"

She spoke angrily and moodily, her eyes turned earthward, her chin resting in her palms as she leaned upon her elbows.

"Are not dreams, too, a home?" asked Diana softly.

"I want to get away; it is high time I did so; indeed, there is not a moment to be lost. How well I understand Herr Franklin's erratic behaviour. He refuses any longer to let his fancy roam; he is resolved to be up and doing, accomplishing something visible and tangible—though deep in his inner self he knows well enough that it is vanity and deception, and less than a dream.... Well, I too want a home; love shall be my roof-tree, and then, quaffing one final draught, I shall sink back into my dreams as if I had never forsaken them!"

She rose while she was yet speaking, and, quite contrary to her wont, paced up and down the room. Suddenly she stood still, surprised at the sound she heard. Diana was laughing! It was a quiet, short, two-syllabled ripple of laughter, and was repeated a second, then a third time. Olivia wanted to scold. Then, taking heart, for the little metallic music gave her back her courage, she stepped up to Diana and said:

"You are laughing, O most wise Diana, and that does not become a youthful huntress!"

She stood before Diana, leaning forward, her two hands on the arm of the chair, her face very near that of the seated woman. Diana looked up, unperturbed; nor did she try to still the laughter that was still lighting her countenance.

"You have at last spoken as I have so long been hoping to hear you speak, my beautiful Olivia." And as the words fell from her lips she was thinking: I should like to kiss her now; but then she'd be furious or she'd withdraw into her shell.

Slowly Olivia raised her head with its heavy crown of golden hair, and, as she stood before her guest, she said irrelevantly:

"I believe I want to have more children."

"I've been thinking the same thing ever since I met you again."

Olivia had opened her heart to Diana with unwonted candour. She, like Diana, was not a woman who could make friends with other members of her sex. And yet, today, she had confided in another woman! Diana's tranquil statement made Olivia feel that here was a person of superior strength, and, forgetting her own preoccupations for a moment, she asked:

"And what about yourself—do you still hesitate?"

Behind the question, Diana sensed a growing distrust, and she said to herself: "It's just as well I did not kiss her just now!" Still, she did not shirk an answer:

"I have never gone against nature, and I have always felt that those above, who guard me and protect me, will not deal harshly with me."

"Do you believe in the saints?" asked Olivia, somewhat awed, and coming a step nearer.

"In the gods," corrected Diana softly.

"Is this Russian a believer?" asked Olivia, once more without transition.

"I fancy he loves no one but himself."

"No one but himself," echoed Olivia, and Diana felt instinctively that the countess was comparing him with her own self, and was applying the words to herself.

"And the prince?"

Olivia seemed to be questioning the oracle.

"The prince appears to be a believer, after his fashion. Perhaps he is the first knight who is not at the same time a robber!"

Olivia's mind, awakened to fresh issues, because for the first time in her life she had spoken her thoughts out frankly, did not take in Diana's last words. Again she spoke irrelevantly.

"All these men are more or less in love with you! And yet you can cruise about alone with them on a ship. If I did not know what you had done with Gregor, I'd fancy you were as cold as the sea."

Diana got up.

"Let us clearly understand one another," said she resolutely. "Not one of these men is of so much account to me that, if the 'Excelsior' sailed tomorrow, he might not stay behind in this castle for all I cared."

The unusual bluntness with which she spoke was deliberate for she wished to adapt herself to Olivia's unsocial prejudices. But Olivia, whose heart had beat tumultuously since first she had thrust aside the veils of her inner sanctuary that morning, again did the unexpected, for she seized Diana's hand, saying:

"There is but one person to my knowledge who should not sail away in the 'Excelsior' tomorrow. Give me your promise! Clemens, too, is uneasy at the thought that you and Wilhelm may go away."

"Clemens will forget me in this affection for Wilhelm; and you will do the same in your love for Clemens. He is handsome and chivalrous, and in a short while will become your admirer!"

Olivia turned her face away.

"He'll learn about love from a serving-wench in a year or two!"

There was a knock at the door, and, when Olivia petulantly cried "Come in," Eduard appeared upon the threshold.

"That sounded more like 'Go away,' as in the Magic Flute! This dim religious light is also quite in keeping."

"Come in, Prince, come in," cried Olivia, still impatiently.

"Yes, do come in," added Diana. "The countess was just deploring the fact that Clemens before long will learn about love from a serving-wench."

"What is a dutiful son to do, seeing that in the castles of the mighty the only females he meets with are young women of noble birth (who are taboo so far as illicit experience is concerned), and serving-wenches?"

"It's all a matter of nerves, Prince. So far as my own feelings are concerned I should prefer, in this case, that it should be a girl of noble birth!"

"But suppose he should promise you," said Eduard teasingly, "to lead her to the altar, the more or less, let it be less, pure serving-wench: you would have to embrace this peasant as a daughter, Countess."

"I am not your Russian friend, Prince Eduard," retorted Olivia coldly.

"Of course a confirmed bachelor has no right to discuss such matters as the upbringing of children," Eduard continued. "Just as if the mere fact of becoming a father instantly conferred the necessary knowledge! Should I, nevertheless, venture to express an opinion before you ladies I should say: I, as the mother of a handsome boy, would, as soon as he was seventeen, or, for greater security, when he was sixteen years of age, request the handsomest among my women friends to initiate the youngster into the mysteries of Venus."

Olivia turned towards him with animation:

"How often have I not had the same idea. But our social institutions sap a woman's strength of mind, so that she cannot venture on such a course—though she may often have dreamed she had the courage as she sat alone in the gloaming."

She glanced over to where Diana stood in her short linen dress, which shimmered white in the shadowy room. The prince, too, under shelter of the darkness, shot a meaning look at Diana, implying that she alone had been in his thoughts as he spoke, and that he, Prince Eduard, was the lad of sixteen under the alias of Clemens, Count of Münsterberg. Diana well understood the meaning which underlay his words, and, facing the eyes of those who, with silent eloquence, obviously looked upon her as a predestined victim chosen as a sacrifice upon the altar of beauty, she felt that they were trying to rivet chains upon her, to force a line of action upon her, instead of leaving her to follow the magnetic promptings of her own nature.

As if in answer to these challenging eyes, she suddenly turned about towards the window near which she was standing, and, with an impetuous gesture, flung the shutters wide. A cataract of light came flooding into the room. Olivia turned away her eyes; Eduard stood there, blinking his, as if frightened.

"High tide," cried Diana. "The wind is blowing fresh from the nor'east, and there's a heavy swell. It's not so very hot yet. Come, Olivia! You promised you'd come along for a bathe!"

An hour later, Wilhelm's little group joined company with Scherer and Kyril, who had been spending the early hours of the forenoon aboard. They all made for the sheltered cove at the foot of the cliff whereon the castle was perched. The party as it assembled for the morning dip was not so much at its ease as the candour of some of its members and the education of the others might have led one to suppose. Olivia and Maria, in their rather full bathing costumes, looked more mundane than the former wished or the latter suspected herself to appear. The men were used to the water and were all of them swimmers. Wilhelm, to whom sea bathing was a new experience, hesitated at the edge of the waves; from time to time he would assume the most comical postures as he hunted for crabs or starfish in the shallow pools; he would exclaim with delight at his finds, so absorbed in his discoveries that even Maria slipped from his mind, and he became wholly unconscious of the presence of women. The prince's ironical habit of mind led him to make mischievous comments anent the other men's figures to Olivia as she lay basking in the sun while her niece cuddled down at her side rather bashfully. Scherer was his usual courteous self, holding himself gallantly, but not failing to appreciate the contrast between the voluptuous curves of Olivia's form and the slender grace of the maiden at her side—though Maria's figure proved to be more developed than he had supposed, and better in keeping with her full young lips. But his gaze did not linger; he soon betook himself to the task in hand, striking out through the water with virile energy.

Diana, Kyril, and Clemens simultaneously disappeared beneath the waves, and simultaneously their heads bobbed up again, greatly to the surprise of all three of them, for they had not seen one another enter the water. Indeed, Diana, in her closely fitting dress had sped so swiftly down the shore that hardly any had caught a glimpse of her as she flashed by. All three appeared for the first time to be in their appropriate element. Eduard, who was not a practiced swimmer, and who, moreover, was more amused by the erotic play of word and look afforded him on the shore, gave up trying to emulate the trio almost before he had begun. Scherer soon followed suit, and Wilhelm's world for the moment consisted entirely of marine fauna.

A sentiment of twofold liberation had invaded Diana's whole being after the ambiguous words spoken in the darkened room. The sea appeared to her pure, and free from all impulsive contamination, a mirror of light, and she was glad and not a little proud to be able to leave the mockers behind her on the beach. Clemens dived and somersaulted, excited to exhibit his prowess by the proximity of a young and beautiful woman, who watched his feats with gay, admiring eyes. In boyish merriment he splashed water at her, invited her to dance, kicked up his heels, spluttered, and cried out jubilantly amid the foam. At last his antics nearly deprived him of voice, so that his joyous screams became fainter.

In Kyril, Diana was surprised to find the perfect swimmer. For the third time she was to witness this man doing something in which he excelled; and for many seconds her thoughts went back to the evening when he played the 'cello with so masterly a cunning. Although her alert intelligence loved to pit itself against the intelligence of men, and gained by the rivalry, it was the physical quality of the male, that which was perceptible by the senses, which stirred her blood; and for this reason she was apt to decide her attitude towards a man before ever he had opened his lips to speak. To withstand the strength of the waves as they flooded towards the land, impelled forward by the breeze from the north-east, to know when to yield and when to push through them; now to be carried on the crest of a billow without striking a stroke, and to let one's body be drawn into the furrow of the wave; without a word, to shoot through the next when it threatens to break over one's head; now to lie on one's back, propelling oneself forward with the legs alone; now again diving through the mighty swells, resisting their weight, judging their dimensions, so as not to emerge prematurely—how well Diana knew the art! Her admiration for the Russian's mastery was far greater than the man himself would have tolerated had he guessed that it existed.

And yet, with the instinct of a man aware of his own prowess, Kyril had felt beforehand that while bathing he would show to advantage in the eyes of this extravagant, luxury-loving creature, and thus win the admiration which she seemed to withhold from his intellectual gifts. It was for this reason that he had once before, when they visited Leucas, proposed a bathe. On that occasion the elements had made it impossible to carry out, for the wind seemed likely to drop at any moment, and they wished to profit by every instant it lasted in order to sail among the Ionian islands. In so far as he was aware that under present circumstances he was pleasing to Diana, his own regard for her increased; for, ever since he had first clapped eyes on her, the evening when she had posed as Atalanta, and then again when he had seen her playing the fine lady in Scherer's drawing-room, he had been puzzled to know what to make of her. The instinctive urge of his being towards her beauty, though veiled by his revolt against her whole personality, had never been quenched; and now, for the first time, in this particular hour, his fanatical mind was able to grasp the reason for her beauty: only now, when he saw this body, constrained on board to a quietude he had little appreciation of, bestirring itself in movements fraught with meaning and purpose, did he realize the aim towards which it had been moulded. And, as the realization burst upon him, his instincts and thoughts, his theories and the imperious call of his manhood, surged over her lithe, bronzed limbs in an irresistible flood.

He swam out to sea, almost unaware of what he was doing, defying the surges, ever farther from the shore, as if enticing her to follow. Clemens, his young arms tired by his exertions, could swim no farther. He called to her to stop; but the lady he had been squiring through the watery element, gave the boy the go-by, and followed the man whose rhythmic progress allured her. Those left behind on the shore were anxious, but their cries of warning merely served to stimulate the rivalry and ambition of the two water sprites. Eduard's uneasiness was of a double kind; how he reproached himself at this moment for not having spent more of his life at the seaside! He strained his eyes to the utmost, shading them with his left hand, filled with mortification and a growing jealousy, vainly endeavouring to calculate the distance between the two heads that bobbed in and out of the water. Scherer was engaged on similar calculations.

Neither could see how Kyril, suddenly disappearing when Diana was no more than a couple of strokes away, swam beneath her, his eyes open in the water; how his strong arm clasped her body as she floated inert on the surface, how he rose and drew her tightly towards him in a mighty embrace, and continued swimming with his legs alone. His teeth flashed, the pressure of his arm became more intimate, his eyes glowed ardently, his hand sought and held her left breast, and Diana, after her first cry of alarm, abandoned herself to the sea and to the man, her curls tossed by the wind and sprayed by the waves. Motionless, she waited for him to release her from his bold embrace. Then he turned his face shoreward, relaxed his hold, and the two, side by side, swam slowly and silently towards land.

CHAPTER THREE

The sea pulsed darkly around the rocks, but the starry sky looked down upon the smothered roar with a sweet, dreamlike serenity, as if it would banish such wildness so long as night was queen, and until, day returning with its ardent advances, the combat of light and waters would be resumed.

In this mood Diana reacted to the sounds and the shimmering loveliness of the evening.

On the lowest of the terraces, open to the sky, high above the rocks, Olivia and her guests sat after dinner, listening to Scherer as he played. The grand piano had been brought out—the men lugging it there themselves, following a sudden inspiration—and, as the strains of Beethoven's last sonatas rose towards the dome above, accompanied by the ceaseless roar of the tide below, its melodies captured and re-echoed from cliff to cliff, while the stars scintillated overhead, there arose out of the turmoil of sound visions of primitive man's original defiance of the gods, the theft of fire from heaven, the overthrow of the Son of Chronos—and the hearers silently surrendered to the passionate impressions the music aroused. Scherer's characteristic reserve was forgotten, his formal dinner suit was swallowed up in the shadows of the night; he had become a magician clad in the black raiment of his office, sitting in front of a black sonorous dragon whose giant sides seemed open to the sea as the creature, wounded and near its end, groaned and sent its savage shrieks to the encounter with the elements, its white teeth gleaming through the darkness and gnashing furiously at the hands that tortured. For an hour Scherer shook off all his reserves. No longer restrained by the artificial lighting and the cramped conventionality of a drawing-room, he gave free rein to hands and arms as his fingers grappled with the keys, and as the minutes passed his thoughts wandered farther and farther away from the music he was discoursing. Mechanically, by force of habit, he played the vast phrases of the composer, his heart beating high, his dispassionate lips slightly apart as if to allow the warm night air to pass freely within. Faces drifted by, faces of women reclining, as he had seen Olivia that morning on the shore, and yet not in her likeness.... He bungled a passage in the left hand, and, thrusting both the faces and the benumbed apathy of his feelings behind him, he concentrated all his faculties on the music, rousing himself to the final onslaught on the dragon before him.

As if each were on an island apart, separated by waters which the eye and the ear could no longer span, the friends sat on the semicircular terrace and were lost to each other's view in the darkness. Wilhelm's thoughts wandered from the young girl in whose company he had spent most of these two days, to the image of a certain Duchessa d'Aosta whom he had met in one of the big hotels at Rome and who seemed to him to personify worldly brilliance, in spite of the fact that her hair was grey and that her daughter, a young girl still, was at her side. Maria reminded him of this girl.... Kyril, while the presto and the subsequent maestoso were being played, had seen himself addressing a huge crowd from a roof on which he stood, and then being escorted into the private rooms of the tsar on the shoulders of his brethren, and with his own hands stripping the royal purple and the crown from the monarch; the crowd suddenly disappeared, and now he saw a naked woman standing before a curtain, proud, silent, like Diana in limb, but with long hair like that of a Frenchwoman he had known, whose tresses he had loved to shake loose on the pillow every night. At the outset, Eduard found his mind straying through the halls of his ancestral home, impelled thither by the syncopated measure of the first phrases; he carried a three-branched candlestick in hand, as if he were looking for his relatives, but he was unsuccessful in his search; then, when the adagio with its slow, twofold beat began, he found himself in a garden where he had never been before, Diana in her short summer frock walking by his side, her eyes on the distant prospect, lightly touching the waving grasses with the tips of the fingers of her left hand; and he meditated upon the recent cruise, and upon the unending kisses and dreamlike nights he had in fancy spent with her in her cabin and on deck; and he asked himself how it had all originated, and marvelled that it should find a solution in melodious melancholy.

The men did not try to catch a glimpse of the two women, whose chairs were separated by the whole width of the terrace. Olivia's white neck in its setting of black velvet gleamed softly in the darkness, as her ample form lay draped in the plentiful folds of her gown. She lolled back in the capacious chair, her arms hanging limply, her long silver chain rippling down over her bosom, like two sister streams meandering in listless curves, from the fountainhead beneath the golden chignon at the nape of Olivia's neck, downward, until they were lost in the lap of love. With eyes closed, she felt the trickle of the metal over her milky skin, and she hardly knew whether the sensation was caused by the links in the chain or by the vigorous touch of a man—some man unknown.

Diana had stepped up to the railing that she might escape from the shadow the huge walls of the castle threw across the terrace, and that, by putting a wider space between herself and her human companions, she might be nearer the stars. A slender figure in her white silk dress, she stood gazing at the tranquil sky, away from the turbulent sea; and, thus silhouetted against the night, she might well have been likened to the sweep of a bow drawn across the strings of a violin. Yet her fingers and her countenance, hidden from all men's sight, were as stormily agitated as was her heart. The pale frock she wore, one for which Eduard had a special fondness, had been selected by her in defiance of her own mood. Do what she might to efface the remembrance of that mighty embrace, she still felt the great hand of the Russian peasants' son clasping her left breast. She had been seized upon, but not subdued: this was the thought that gyrated in her head since that noontide swim, and which, for the first time since she had known him, made her feel she must concede him at least a particle of supremacy; since she acknowledged to herself that she had offered but little resistance, nay even that she would have been prepared to tolerate whatever he had demanded of her.

Was it in this very sea? And was that why she could no longer venture to contemplate the inrolling surges? Was it the sea, that solitary refuge of the restless ones, which had grappled with her? Had the sea yet other sons who might cross her path, might dive beneath her, and clasp her? She furiously thrust aside the thought of any more intimate relationship with a man who was so alien to her whole nature, towards whom by words and looks she had displayed a challenging hostility she had not felt towards any other man this many a year. So passionately cold was her mood, so greatly was her inner harmony disturbed, that when the tender melody of the slow movement was wafted towards her and threatened to melt her, she rebelled, and sought to arm herself in hardness. Urgently, she gazed up at the stars; in vain! It seemed to her that tonight she did not belong to their community any more, so dumb did they remain to her need.

Then the world of sounds rose on the airy rhythm of a scherzo, breaking the spell that held her; and all at once the vital fires were rekindled within her, they flamed and flickered and ducked and danced, gripping and nipping the stagnant blood; her fingers loosened their hold upon the railing, she stepped away from the breastwork, her eyes regained their serenity, and, as at this moment the tenuous film of clouds parted, revealing the trusty guardians of Diana's skies, she felt they were sending her a message of friendly greeting: for now she found in the firmament that for which she had been seeking, and the breath came easily from her lungs; she smiled, the horror that had flooded her was ebbing with the tide below, and she forgot, in the joy of release, that as with the tide, such an ebb could not be lasting.

Scherer rose after playing the final chords of a short presto, and this was the signal for them all to rise as if they wished to release themselves from the embrace that had held them. Diana, now, was the lightest-hearted of the party; and she, who usually was the last to arouse herself from the spell of music, tonight took the initiative in breaking the silence.

"You have conjured away the last clouds with your playing, and the protective deities are once more to be seen, while Saturn himself shines above your head. It was not until the scherzo, that part where longing broke through the theme, that the gods vouchsafed to show themselves, for longing is alien to their nature, and only the sea must for ever will and desire."

She did not glance aside as she spoke, but kept her eyes on the man she was thanking, and it was not until she had actually uttered the words that she realized to whom they had really been addressed. Olivia alone of the company had remained seated and motionless; now her tragic alto, reached them from afar:

"Why should the gods be antagonistic to human yearning, Diana? Their very existence depends on it!"

"No, no, Olivia," protested Diana, coming nearer to the group of men. "We only invented such an idea. They can have nothing to do with such things."

"She is right," said Scherer stepping up to the countess. "Beethoven seems for ever to be in combat with the powers above; either he threatens them, or else he laments."

"And that is why he is the most genuine of suffering mankind," came in Kyril's deep voice from the breastwork.

"Suffering?" Diana sought in vain to quell the pride her tone masked. "Present day," she added coldly.

"We hope that the men of tomorrow will not need him any more," said the Russian.

"Ah, whither are Mozart's blue shades vanished? For a moment in the scherzo he seemed near...." began Diana softly.

"Mozart? Fulfilment, happiness," broke in Scherer's voice. "You can't play that sort of thing in the neighbourhood of the sea."

"Such are for proud natures alone," murmured Diana. "The others need desires and lamentation—otherwise they freeze!"

"I don't care for Mozart," said Olivia rising. "He's too frivolous, too candid, too nimble for me. It invariably makes me think of a ballet—and that is detestable!"

"Not always," said Eduard, who had silently rejoined Kyril, and now addressed himself mainly to the Russian. "Your imperial ballet, for instance, is the best thing your country has to offer—in addition to furs and Catherine and Dostoeffsky."

"You desecrate a great name, Your Highness," answered the Russian.

"Do you indeed set so much store on the empress? Well, she certainly was a fine figure of a ruler," mocked the prince.

"At least she was better than many a tsar and many a German emperor!"

"Everything for the people!" said Eduard gravely. "And if blood should drip from her alcove, what concern is that of history?"

"Everything through the people," corrected the Russian. "That is the future!"

"You demand too much. If Satan had saddled me with the rank of first-born, I should merely have been able to ask myself: 'How would it be if you made this attempt?' I really could not do more."

"A good start," said Kyril, looking keenly at the prince. "But nothing more. Anyway it is too late for such attempts!"

"We've just been hearing music, and here you are already talking business," complained Wilhelm who had been standing silently beside the two men.

"Good for Wilhelm," cried Diana laughing. "And here champagne has been handed round, and you two have been holding your glasses these many minutes without realizing what they contained, so absorbed were you in your democratic antitheses!" She emptied her glass at one draught and held it out to be refilled, her pulses quickening under the stimulus. Eduard went up to her, saying:

"On the contrary! I've been enjoying the bouquet beforehand, and, while talking, have taken in the brand. Riddle: to distinguish Clicquot from Mumm without tasting. Solution: subtle difference in the aroma and in the tempo of the effervescence."

"The tempo of the effervescence," cried Diana. "I like that!"

"Labour lost," thought Kyril, turning away.

"I have one wish at the moment," continued Diana. "May I say what it is?"

"To dance?" It was Scherer who spoke.

"To dance!"

"I'll fetch my lute," said Wilhelm, relieved at the turn matters were taking, as he ran to fetch the instrument.

Olivia smiled. She suddenly felt older, felt as if Diana were her daughter. "Such a rapid change of mood," she thought. "Even at eighteen I could not have reacted thus speedily.—Or, could I, after all?"

Piano and chairs were pushed back against the walls to make room for the dance; Wilhelm had taken a seat on the steps leading into the room, legs crossed as was his custom. The ribbons he was so proud of floated from the scroll of the lute as gracefully and lightly as the waltz he now began to play. While he played, he sang, as the fancy took him, sometimes in German, at others in Italian, or merely "la la la," tapping the time softly with his toe, as if to provide a bass. Scherer invited Olivia to dance; but she would not let herself be persuaded. The prince, too, she refused.

"And what about you, Doctor?" asked Eduard as he passed by the Russian.

"I don't dance," answered Kyril.

Eduard was pleased. He fancied himself as a dancer. Nevertheless, groping in his mind for every kind of possibility which could bind this man to Diana or separate him from her, the prince asked further:

"Too frivolous an undertaking for the millennium you hope to start?"

"No one has taught me, Your Highness."

The words came sullenly, and Eduard became aware that for the first time the revolutionist was showing his teeth to the prince—that though Kyril professed to regard hereditary rulers with contempt and mockery, his essential feeling towards them was one of hatred.

Diana danced with Eduard. After a very few steps she recognized in the prince the accomplished dancer, and he the same in her. Then as if by prearrangement, he passed her to Scherer. The latter, too, danced well, though with overmuch care and precision, and it seemed to Diana that, just as in ordinary life he was exaggeratedly reserved, so in the dance he was too aloof, holding his partner so far from him that the rhythm and equilibrium of their movements were disturbed.

She hardly paused as she changed partners again, merely swallowing a glass of champagne in passing from Scherer's arm to the prince's. And when Wilhelm made as if to pause in his playing, she imperiously commanded him not to stop.

The sedate round with Scherer, the wine, and, in especial Eduard's perfect leading, which was elastic and yet sure, all contributed to make Diana feel lighter than ever, and it was as one in a dream that she passed from the vestibule of society into the temple. She gave herself up wholly to the dance, and he, who at long last held her in his arms, did so with her free consent. For Kyril, the pair of them were simultaneously contemptible and attractive. Set as he was on influencing the prince, he was loath to see the adventuress (who had made so poor a use of her great gifts) in such intimate communion with Eduard; and he was equally perturbed to see the prince, with the sanction of the hypocritical canons of upper-class morality, clasping Diana in his arms openly before all the world. Wrath kindled within him, as it always did when he was confronted with the buoyant gaiety of cultured people, and their reciprocal ease of manner; and soon this couple, dancing so light-heartedly upon the terrace of an ancient castle, clad in the conventional black of the male and the fashionable white of the female, gracefully swaying beneath the starry skies, useless and frivolous, appeared to him the epitomized symbol of the world that must be destroyed, the emblem of the ghosts of yester-year, the enemy.

Scherer, familiar with the turns of fortune in political life, wondered as he watched this young woman of many loves, whether some day his turn might not come. Olivia smiled to herself and held aloof; she could not throw off the feeling that here disporting itself before her was carefree youth, to whose kingdom she had ceased to belong; and yet she was all the more resolved to take limitless revenge before it was too late. Her eyes sought out the Russian, drew his gaze away from the dancing pair towards herself. Kyril came over to where she sat, and stood behind her, pressing close to her chair.

Eduard and Diana danced. Her knees, her breast, touched him as she swayed; she felt his arm lightly about her this night, as that morning the peasant's had rudely seized her.

"Onward, ever onward," whispered Eduard as they reached the outermost part of the terrace where the others could not overhear him. Even now he refrained from addressing her directly.

"Ever onward," repeated she a little louder, a smile on her lips.

"And one evening they danced together on the terrace of a Dalmatian castle," said Eduard, as his breath softly caressed her shoulder.

"Under the constellation of the Scales," added Diana.

They continued to dance in silence. Eduard slackened his pace so that two bars were played to one set of steps. He called to her under his breath:

"Diana!"

A look of supplication in his eyes: a longing that she should at last address him by name: she hesitated a moment, then whispered:

"Eduard!"

Hardly had the word escaped her lips than she whirled him off at double speed, fitting one whole set of steps into every half bar of the waltz. She wanted to make him breathless, and succeeded in maddening herself the more; she loved him twice as much, because he did not lose his head or his step.

"Diana! Are you listening?"

"I am listening."

"Are you mine?"

"I don't know."

"Will you become mine?"

"I am that already."

"Tell me, whom do you love?"

"Dame Liberty!"

"She's a woman."

"That am I too."

"Do you love the Russian?"

"I hate him."

"He loves you."

As he spoke, a lute-string broke as if plucked by an unknown power, shadows flitted through the open door, Wilhelm sprang up, Scherer strode up to where the lad stood, Olivia in his wake; Kyril remained where he was; the pair of dancers paused, hand in hand, awaiting the pleasure of the lute-player. Then Olivia turned to look at them, they separated, Scherer advanced, an envelope in his hand. Both the prince and Diana snuffed misfortune in the air; both sensed it would strike at them.

"A wire for you, Prince," said Olivia.

To Eduard it seemed as if the woman in black, standing thus by the white-clad woman, were the harbinger of death. Slowly he asked:

"Who is it knows that I am here?"

He stepped into the room, held the paper under the light, and read—it was a message from his cousin in Venice:

"Court chamberlain wires me, not knowing where you are. Terrible accident. Heinrich and Stefan in motor smash yesterday. Stefan dead. Heinrich seriously injured recovery problematical. Old prince crushed by blow, keeping his bed. Your instant return requested. Much grieved having to send such evil tidings...."

The paper slipped from Eduard's fingers. His first thought was for his father. "Will he live through this catastrophe?" Next his mind turned to Heinrich: "Recovery problematical." His anxiety was not so much centred upon this almost unknown brother as upon himself. If Heinrich did not pull through, his own life's course would be completely altered, his freedom would vanish, he would have to wear the crown, everything would be finished so far as he was concerned.

Diana instinctively felt the doom that was hanging over him, and as he came to the threshold of the door, having picked up the paper and thrust it into his pocket, she thought she divined everything: His father is dead! That would be the most terrible news.

"You are—you have..." began Scherer, coming towards him.

"An accident. My brothers, in a motor smash, one killed outright, the other in a bad way. I must leave for home immediately."

One thought sped round the group: He will become the reigning prince. To Scherer the thought brought satisfaction; Olivia felt cynical about it; to Wilhelm it seemed fraught with poesy. Diana and Kyril were deeply moved, both felt perplexed. Eduard sensed what they were thinking, but all he said was:

"Does the steamer call here tomorrow, Countess?"

"The Trieste boat? Not till Friday."

"Three days. Too long to wait!"

Scherer went into the drawing-room, called the servant, and said curtly:

"Send some one down to the 'Excelsior.' She's still under steam. They're to make her ready for an immediate start. We can weigh anchor in an hour."

"Oh but, can I really...? What about the others? ... Thank you, my dear Scherer!"

The party broke up without more ado.

"And I shan't be able to say good-bye to Clemens after all," said Wilhelm.

"Stay with us, then," urged Olivia.

"May I really stay?"

"We'll be simply delighted to have you."

Kyril bowed stiffly as he bade the countess farewell. They seemed to have been betrayed by fate.

Eduard sought out Diana with his eyes. She drew near the group round the doorway as he passed through it. Silently she followed his gaze as he looked downward towards the harbour where the vessel lay.

CHAPTER FOUR

Soon after midnight the yacht got under way, and, while the prince went astern, hardly conscious whither he was going, Scherer retired to the captain's cabin to look over the ship's papers. But his thoughts wandered. He was wondering whether, in the eventuality of Prince Eduard assuming the crown, the young sovereign would still seek his counsel. Again in imagination the financier saw himself and the prince in the early days of their acquaintance, pacing to and fro in the library, talking of all and sundry, from Rousseau to Emerson, and from Marx to Plato. Again he saw the dignified modesty of the young fellow's inquiring eyes, and marvelled at the contrast between this intimate of his and the man the world spoke of as the "tall cynical prince"; and Scherer was pleased at the thought that these talks, which were, rather, monologues delivered by a middle-aged and experienced warrior to his junior, might serve, in the end, to guide a reigning monarch into the paths of democracy.

Born in the ranks of the middle class and resolved never to accept a title which would raise him out of the commonalty, Scherer, jealous of his independence, shunned a life in the arena of practical politics, feeling that his mission was, rather, to spread his philanthropical ideas by personal influence. For he had learned from the experiences of business life, as he had from reading historical memoirs, how decisive was the value of such influence; he knew how the whole trend of some political issue might depend on a chance meeting, a chance conversation; and he smiled when he remembered that even in his own newspapers such developments were ascribed to parliamentary pressure or to the "spirit of the time." For an hour, now, he had been weighing the possibility that his ideas might find in this modern-minded prince an instrument for their realization; he had, as it were, a vision of an initial experiment on German soil.... The only thing he did not feel certain about was whether he had done wisely to allow his love of music to induce him to bring the prince and the Russian together that evening in March when they had made up a quartette party; he wondered how far Kyril had been able to influence the prince; he himself, as a man of bourgeois birth, must necessarily be in conflict with a man of the Russian's views; yet Kyril and the prince had had long talks together since they had joined the yacht....

Kyril did not care to take his customary place at the stern this evening; he no longer felt fascinated by the wake the ship left behind in the water; another than he, one who tonight had to hold the balance between past and future, had a better right to such contemplation.

The Russian sat huddled upon a coil of rope in the bows looking out towards the path the vessel would be taking. He gazed into the future, while he mused: "Will this man, too, play the traitor to himself as they all do when they mount the throne? I can see him as he sits over there lost in reverie. What's he thinking about? Probably he's merely worrying as to whether there should be six black horses or eight! Ah, je m'en fiche! ... Or, can I still do something with him? Everything for the people! Yes, he spoke quite seriously; that would be one step gained at least. If only I could keep an eye on him, if only I could have a finger in that pie.... I'd have to get the comrades to understand—white-livered curs!—just what such 'compromises' signify.... A tree grows up from a tiny seed, and should even an insignificant little country be impregnated with our ideas; ... but at first its people would want their prince at the head of things. He's no worse a man than any of us, and, reflected in the mirror of the centuries... What harm can there be in making a German essay before starting on the great Russian work?..."

He pondered the thought deeply; he kept his mind pure of personal ambition, of will to personal power; under the lash of his fanatical and passionate meditations he even kept his jealousy and the call of his blood to heel. It was foreign to this Russian's nature to see himself clearly, as he really was; to distinguish will-to-power from an unselfish desire to improve the lot of the people, as the woodman distinguishes green from green in the forest. He did not consciously wish to approve in himself, and to range in the complicated calculus of motives, impulses which would in the end be made the foundation of bargains; to give free rein to the urges of his strangely mingled nature, under the plea that thereby he was promoting the cause of freedom. And yet, when his instincts called, he was prone to sacrifice his mission, since he was not really inclined, in his inner-most heart, for self-immolation. At the ecstatic hour of martyrdom, he would be a fanatic willing to put his head in the noose; but it would never occur to this peasant's son that, for the sake of his mission, he ought to forgo everyday joys, the delights of youth, the embraces of a woman he desired. Thus in these nocturnal musings he revolved unceasingly in an abstract orbit, ignoring his own secret motive—which was, to remain in close contact with the prince and the woman whose careers would (he foresaw) be intertwined.

Eduard sat at the other end of the yacht, alone, as if he were no longer one of the company. After a while, Scherer made up his mind to go to bed without disturbing his guest by wishing him good-night. He urged the Russian to follow suit.

"Do you mean to finish the cruise according to plan?" asked Kyril.

"No, I don't expect to do much more than go to Venice. We had thought to stay aboard another week, but everything is changed now."

"Hm. Yes, of course. Does the prince treasure his liberty?"

"Aye—and his father," answered Scherer evasively. "The old man suffers from heart trouble, and will hardly I fear recover from the shock."

"Then it would be the prince's turn?"

"He hopes his father will recover."

"Wily old fox," thought Kyril. "These German bourgeois are past masters in the art of evasion!"

"Are you staying up any longer? I'm tired."

"So am I. You played opus in awfully well," continued Kyril as they descended the companion. "The presto, perhaps, needs just a drop of machine oil...."

"At last," sighed Eduard who had longed for complete solitude, so that his harassed nerves might find relief in movement, though it were no more than pacing up and down the deck. Yet he could not venture on such a walk so long as the others were about, lest they should enter into conversation. Moreover, his ambition spurred him to seek the bows, a place he grudged the Russian this night; an irresistible impulse drove him to cut lose from the stern, which promoted thoughts of past happenings made vivid and actual by the lurid news from his home. Arrived at the bows, he stood watching the nose of the yacht cutting its way through the waters, and the sight gave him a sense of pleasure. He, such a combination of bitter-sweet irony, had always been loath to delve into the future; but tonight when care and movement seemed simultaneously forced on him, something drew him to the bows.... Was it already an actuality? Could not Heinrich...?

A light footfall caught his ear. Diana, having discarded her gay white frock, had changed into a dark one. She had waited until she heard the two men retire to their cabins. She felt that Eduard, with whom she had exchanged no word on the drive down to the harbour, would be needing her. As Scherer and Kyril passed her cabin, she opened the door, little caring what the former, and still less what the latter, might think of her action. Experienced in all the ruses of love, supple of body as an artist or an apache, she now took this unconventional step quite frankly, accosting the two men as they approached, asking innocently: "Is the prince still on deck?"

"Yes, I fancy he is."

"Then I'll go up and have a talk with him. Good-night!"

As Diana drew near, the prince seized her hand with unwonted vivacity.

"Stay with me!" His appeal was spoken softly but vehemently. "Won't you stay?" The question was pregnant with anxiety.

"Of course I will," she exclaimed cheerfully, giving him renewed confidence, so that his tone was more courageous as he asked: "Here, on deck, till morning?"

"Till morning."

"And then, afterwards too?"

"Afterwards too." She smiled evasively.

There was an abrupt change in his manner. He turned round, and leaned his back against the rail.

"Tomorrow I shall be at home."

"Why do you speak so coldly?"

"I shall refuse the succession."

"What do you mean?"

"Immediately on arriving, tomorrow, I shall hand my refusal in to the ministry, so that in the case of Heinrich's—or in the case of my father's—death, there shall be no discussion...."

She was silent for a while. Then she asked, as if she honestly wished for information:

"Who will come to the throne in that case?"

"A cousin of a collateral line. Sturdy young fellow, cut out for the job, as fat Frederick William used to say of his second son. Besides, it's high time two such tiny countries should be united under one ruler. It will work out cheaper, simplify the administration.... It's long been the wish of the dynasty...."

"A collateral line! But what will your people have to say to that?"

He moved restlessly to the bows again.

"Our people? Of course they want to keep their independence. There's been a press campaign going on these three years, theoretical discussions, possible dying out of the line.... Princedom! Palace! Royal theatre! State carriages! Christenings! It's all so old-fashioned, so ridiculous! I'll withdraw...."

"You'll do nothing of the sort, Prince Eduard!"

He stopped in his pacing. Never had he heard her speak so coldly. Did her words not sound almost like a command? There she sat before him in her deck chair, her legs crossed, her arms spread wide on either side of her along the cordage. Her eyes were fixed on his, cold and steady. Nose and chin cocked in the air, clear-cut against the dark sky; lips compressed; she seemed petrified all of a sudden, so motionless did she sit; her locks the only live thing about her, as the wind of the ship's going tossed her curls.

"There sounds the voice of conscience," thought the prince ruefully. What he said was: "My most gracious lady is pleased to speak most ungraciously."

She got up and went close to him, so close that her light skirt blew against his knees as it had when they had danced together. But how changed was she from those few hours ago when the air had been laden with music and longing, and she had looked kindly upon his wooing. Now she was steel, hard and keen and menacing, as she said with even greater intensity than before, though she never raised her voice: "For you cannot give up your country."

"Oh, what does the country matter!"

"Not just for the country's sake."

"For whose then?"

"Fate...."

"A motor car?"

"Death!"

"Well? and..."

"One does not flinch in face of death."

"I've never been frightened of him."

"You fear life: that is easier. I have always lived with death, and therefore I am mistress of my own life."

They had remained facing one another in the bows of the ship. Her demeanour was so full of implications, her speech so metallic, that he was conscience-stricken, and seemed to hear what from the first had been his own inner voice speaking through her mouth. He seized her by the shoulder.

"What do you want, Diana?"

"Your promise that you will not send in your refusal."

"Perhaps Heinrich will recover...."

"Oh, that you should hang so weighty a thing on the possibility of a 'perhaps'! Promise, tonight, here, beneath the constellation of the Scales...."

Eduard relaxed his hold on her shoulders. His lips twitched. Then he said:

"Very well, then. But only in exchange for a reciprocal promise."

"A promise from me? Oh, but I am no more than an intercessor—I might as well be a priest!"

"No. It is to you alone that I will promise, and only then if you will give me..."

"No, no!"

"Please, Diana! You must! You must now!"

He folded her in his arms. All at once her mind was in a whirl; she felt weak, and tried to get herself in hand; she laid her chin on his shoulder, looking up at him, whispering:

"I love you; you shall have everything I have to give. Do you hear, Eduard? Everything!"

"I want more than everything, Diana."

She pulled herself free. So it was this that had made him hesitate, this that had become clear to her one morning in the monastery gardens—and it was this that she must guard, the one thing she must not part with for any consideration.

"You would deprive me of my freedom...."

He bowed his head in silence. She quitted his side, walked away to the extremity of the bows, came back again, slowly, heavily. As she reached him, he pressed her gently down into the deck chair, and, himself leaning against the rail, he said: "Diana!"

"Eduard...."

"Will you hear what I have to say?"

"Speak...."

"Last night, here, on the 'Excelsior,' I drafted a letter which was ultimately intended for our little ministry at home. Herein I explained that I renounced all my claims to the crown and succession if death should unexpectedly take either of my brothers before an heir was born. My reason: I wished to wed a lady of birth and standing, though not one of royal blood. I was merely awaiting your promise before posting the letter. Tonight, however, the issue has taken a threatening turn: tomorrow, I may become heir to the throne. If you want me to give you the pledge you have asked for, my condition is that you enter into a morganatic union with me. No religious ceremony. Only a civil marriage. Now the choice lies with you."

He had, at the last, spoken quite dispassionately, with an almost froward emphasis, for he wished to conceal his inner agitation behind the mask of his habitual irony. But she took no notice of his decoy.

"You shall have everything," she responded gravely, "but I must keep my liberty."

He paced the deck in uncontrollable agitation. Then he came again to where she sat, and said jerkily:

"So you imagine that I am going to tolerate that Diana de Wassilko shall become the mistress of a petty prince!"

She got to her feet, and, raising her eyebrows, said: "It pleases Your Highness to revert to the language of courts."

"That's where you would have me be, Mademoiselle."

"But I could not follow you there."

"That's why I shall have to leave Berlin in order to follow you whither your caprice may take you!"

"I shall be alone if I so desire."

"And I shall be awaiting you in your room when you return at night."

"At night you will be the slave of your writing-table or of your reception rooms."

"Diana!" His voice betrayed how forlorn he felt.

"Well?"

"I beg of you..."

"What do you wish me to do?"

He pressed her back in her chair, threw himself at her feet, clasping her and unclasping her, as he whispered:

"I love you. I have always been alone. I don't want to hesitate for ever; you might go away. And yet, if I remain free, you must remain free too, at my side; the ring means nothing, and I don't wish to bind you. But if... Over there is a tiny country which I may be called upon to rule. The humanly possible thing to do (a thing which no prince has ever succeeded in doing, and one which my father scarcely tried to do) would be to make some kind of humanly decent existence possible for two hundred thousand persons—but I could not do it single-handed. You once said that fate was like the owner of a slowly gyrating merry-go-round, bidding us make our choice of the many horses she offered, but that it was up to us to make our choice wisely and know without a doubt which one we would bestride. Do you remember? You said that yourself. Well, the time has come for us to make our choice. With all your wisdom, your knowledge, with so much tact, so much devotion to the work-in-hand (such as I have never seen in any minister of State), with your heart against my heart, your hand, so cool and strong, in mine—ah, thus I could venture the undertaking—if indeed it has to be!"

He bowed his head in her lap: all at once it was as if she were his mother rather than his beloved. Her hand stroked his fair, smooth hair; her eyes gazed over the sea....

Eight bells were sounded. He sprang to his feet, smiling, dodging behind her as she rose in order to walk on her right side as they strolled down the deck. They halted at the chart-room which was empty. Something gleamed from the interior. They entered.

"Hovering in a metal ring," said Diana as she leaned forward to study the compass. "To know one direction, unerringly, magnetically attracted, never to be able to deviate: only thus can one lead oneself and the others on a life's journey. Shall I abruptly steer my course north-eastward?"

She turned to him, laying her hand upon his shoulder. He clasped her to him in a passionate, unending kiss.

CHAPTER FIVE

On their arrival at Trieste the expected dispatch was brought aboard. It had been entrusted to the Austrian authorities, in the hope of insuring speedier delivery. Thus the port officials were already acquainted with its tenor. The crown prince was dead. Eduard was heir apparent.

The party on the "Excelsior" had lunched late. Calmly awaiting the end of the cruise, they had made the most of one another's company during the hours that were left to them. Eduard (as if seeking for a sedative) had reached for the chess-board and he and Kyril had played while Diana and Scherer looked on. Kyril had won. The next game likewise fell to the Russian. Soon after two, when the town was already in sight, a third game was started. Still Kyril won.

"You'll have to give me my revenge," cried Eduard, with unusual excitement.

"We'll play all the way to Vienna if you like!"

"You are taking the same train? Enchanté. Then we'll carry on the fight, and in the end—by the time we reach St. Pölten I'm sure—I shall have defeated you."

He bundled the chessmen away, and seized a telescope.

The tidings, expected as they were, left him cold. He begged them not to visit the Trieste churches on his account, nor to dine in a hotel, for his train was not timed to leave before ten. All four felt that it would be better not to prolong this painful leave-taking, so they bade farewell, the one hearty note being the cordial thanks to Scherer for his genial hospitality. In a few days they would probably meet again in Berlin, whither Scherer, Diana, and Kyril would be going, to take up their work once more; and where Eduard was likewise determined to go in order to hand over the necessary documents of his office to the competent authority. As Eduard bent over Diana's hand to kiss it, he looked up at her beseechingly, but her eyes remained inscrutable. Then she felt Kyril's peasant hand grip hers, so vehemently that she was troubled, for she had not witnessed such a mood in him the last few days.

"And now at last the firm is all that is left," said Diana coming through the door into the dining saloon, where but two places were laid on the flower-bedecked table. "Just as two years ago on the terrace of your house! Of course the fact that we are sailing to Venice makes a slight difference, doesn't it?"

"She is careful not to refer to Athens," thought Scherer, leading her to the table.

"His gallantry has assumed a lighter tone," Diana was thinking. "Strangely enough, the companionship of young people does not make him appear old."

"Souper des adieux, Prince Eduard would say," and Diana smiled at Scherer's use of the plural, which implied a certain coquetry on his part.

"Are we then to dine with ghosts?"

"I have never eaten in your company except in the presence of ghosts!"

"Wilhelm would say: But the salad is really only a take-in! It looks as if there were mountains of it, and then it turns out to be nothing but green air."

"Will you take some celery? It's as long as papyrus."

"One could write sonnets on it," said Diana.

She laughed at Franklin's excitable ways, Scherer aped the big blond Russian; Diana, herself, was not spared in their merry badinage. Then the various clerks in the office came in for their raillery, the business had its share, and finally they drank a toast to competition. It was a joyous meal after a day over which death had cast its gloom, full of reminiscence, of quips, of caricature; and when they at length rose from table they declared it would have been far better if they two alone had sailed the Mediterranean and had always drunk Marsala as they had this evening.

"I wonder where those two have got by now," said Diana in the smoking-saloon on deck.

"They've not started yet! Or did you mean how far they had got with one another?"

"How can one judge of others from a distance?" Diana crossed her legs. She held her cigarette at arm's length, and asked, a challenge in her voice: "Or, what was really in your mind? What are they thinking of us, eh?"

"That you are delightful," said he, kissing her outstretched arm. As he did so, his eyes dwelt on the firm muscles of her upper arm, which shimmered through a filmy sleeve, and he drank in the sweet aroma of her person, which was a composite of unscented soap, a thin layer of powder, the acrid smell of eau de Cologne, clean linen and a fresh, sound skin tanned by much exposure to the sun, and looking like burnished metal against the delicate texture of her gown.

Diana was aware of the sensual appeal she exercised over this man, whom she had found more chivalrous than he had ever been in the presence of his guests; now she was reminded of this anew as he slowly raised his head. She let her arm fall to her side, and lapsed into a brown study: "He's thinking that we are alone on board.... Ah, Freedom! To enjoy all the sport of love, from the man's first glance at the brooch, right to the fingers which nervously fumble with the pin; to be free to weave the web of love, or to break off when one willed, from minute to minute uncertain of what the next move will be.... To make men pliable as wax; to make them reveal themselves as they implore or threaten—so that their tongues are loosened as their limbs grow tenser, tongues that had been too proud to talk of plans, too discreet to disclose secrets.... And oneself to be consumed with desire, to arise from ever renewed embraces, from ever changing arms, a person refreshed, purified and rejuvenated, more light-hearted, more audacious, flying free above the abyss—an abyss which the unfree contemplate with alarm as a place full of tribulation and uncertainty, haunted by an unknown destiny, and to be shunned at all hazards—whereas the free, stretching their pinions wide, soar joyfully over it in magic spirals.... Freedom! Not to have to be the hammer doomed to a certain task...."

She sat very still, her gaze turned inward, lost to the passage of time. Scherer observed her in silence, thinking the while: "How turbulent she is within, how peaceful without! What must she be like when she is ardent? One should never possess women of her sort; they would then become simple, would lose their mystery, and Schopenhauer with his cynical remarks is at bottom right.... But children ... to lure children out of them ... that alone would be worth the price of solitude...."

"Is the old prince very far gone?" asked Diana, unexpectedly breaking the long silence.

"Last Christmas, when I saw him face to face, he had the bluish tint and the pinched lips of a man in the last stages of heart disease. Yesterday came the terrible shock of the accident. Prince Eduard is likely to have a field for his activities any day now."

"Activities? I think the word suits him. But do you look upon him as energetic?"

"He hides his capacity for doing great deeds in a mantle of melancholy. But his ironical faculty is an obstacle to his troubling himself to perform petty things. The puzzle to-day is, whether he looks upon the princedom as a great thing."

"Surely that is no longer the question," said Diana, rising as if to give freer rein to her thoughts. She drew her cape around her and paced the deck at Scherer's side. "He has often spoken of the unlikely eventuality of his being summoned to his present task, has he not? Don't you think that his relief at there being so little prospect of it was not wholly genuine? His repudiation of any desire to succeed to the throne may really have been the expression of the tragical conviction that, as things were, he had no reasonable prospect of ever having any serious work to do in the world." She stopped in her walk, looked at her companion, reflected for a moment, then, shaking her head, she resumed her pacing to and fro, saying: "And I can hardly believe any such thing. He is more interested in his action upon the inner life of men than in his action upon exterior things; he would be glad to know that a few thousand hearts were the happier through his work. The balance of power in Europe, courts and parliaments, alliances and intrigues, colonies and navigation, trouble him little; and were he to inherit an empire tomorrow, he would be more inclined to have a thousand peasants' cottages built than one cruiser. Don't you think I'm right? For he is good at bottom; and because he was born unfree, as Wilhelm was born free, he is condemned to make himself appear cynical."

"If only he had some really live person at his side to act as counsellor! But that old Tauernheim who has been in office these twenty years trying to introduce communal welfare work—he's nothing but a mummy."

"What do you think of Kyril Sergievitch?"

Diana was standing in the stern, where Kyril had so often sat. The sea was calm, a veil of mist lay lightly upon it, the sky was thinly overcast, the air was warm, and the wind had almost entirely dropped.

"Kyril, too, is unfree," said Scherer, looking down into the water. "He has sold his peasanthood for an idea. Only a perfectly free nature can constrain the prince to action."

And Diana thought: "True; yet he would bind this free nature of mine.... Why should one always be cabined, cribbed, and confined as soon as ever one comes in contact with one's fellows?"

"A penny for your thoughts," broke in Scherer's voice upon her meditations. His tone struck her as unusual, and she looked up at him, to find his eyes fixed upon the shoulder from which her wrap had slipped. She turned towards him, looking him full in the face, her eyes cold and aloof.

"I'm thinking that all of you build up systems, and it astonishes me to find that even you seem to consider that I should be more useful as one of the beams in an edifice than I can ever be soaring free. Am I right?"

An impulse rose within her to set his mind in a whirl, to bewilder this man whose constructive imagination was for ever making ingenious combinations, who wanted to be the architect of her life and of the lives of his friends. She would grip him in her pliant clutch and force him to face the issues which his temperamental circumspection made him prone to evade. Scherer read her hostility in her eyes as she awaited his answer; but although his pride rose against the challenge, his senses were doubly allured by the woman who for so long had puzzled and perplexed him. A hazy conviction seemed to tell him that the arrogance with which she defended her inner freedom could be overcome by no other force than the power of the conquering male. As these friends confronted one another, they rediscovered the fundamental antagonism of their two natures; impulse took the bit between its teeth, and rushed the opponents into a proximity which intellect and respect had at all times avoided. Scherer, as he stood there before her, elegant and enigmatical, was no longer Diana's friend and host from the great city; she saw in him now the eternal enemy, the man sure of himself, the burgher; at the same time the vision of last night's outburst when Eduard had wanted to deprive her of her freedom rose to her mind. What was she to do? She felt her resolution wavering. Would she for ever be able to withstand the supplication of so tender a heart as the prince's? Two forces seemed to be contending for mastery over her: her own impulse to freedom, which the future seemed to be threatening, and which, so long as it remained hers, she wished to uphold at all costs; and Scherer's impulse to order, which would attempt to make her life fruitful, nay, would construct her life for her and in spite of her, an impulse she deemed it worth while to bewilder and lead astray.