Temporal Power | Page 8

her
credit for any finer or higher feeling.
"You know,"--she continued--"you must surely know--" here, despite
the strong restraint she put upon herself, her voice broke, and her slight
figure swayed in its white draperies as if about to fall. She looked at
him with a sense of rising tears in her throat,--tears of which she was
ashamed,--for she was full of a passionate emotion too strong for
weeping--a contempt of herself and of him, too great for mere clamour.
Was he so much of a man in the slow thick density of his brain she
thought, as to have no instinctive perception of her utter misery? He
hastened to her and tried to take her hands, but she drew herself away
from him and sank down in a chair as if exhausted.
"You are tired!" he said kindly--"The tedious ceremonial--the still more
tedious congratulations,--and the fatiguing journey from the capital to
this place have been too much for your strength. You must rest!"
"It is not that!"--she answered--"not that! I am not tired,--but--but-- I
cannot say my prayers tonight till you know my whole heart!"

A curious reverence and pity moved him. All day long he had been in a
state of resentful irritation,--he had loathed himself for having
consented to marry this girl without loving her,--he had branded
himself inwardly as a liar and hypocrite when he had sworn his
marriage vows 'before God,' whereas if he truly believed in God, such
vows taken untruthfully were mere blasphemy;--and now she herself, a
young thing tenderly brought up like a tropical flower in the enervating
hot-house atmosphere of Court life, yet had such a pure, deep
consciousness of God in her, that she actually could not pray with the
slightest blur of a secret on her soul! He waited wonderingly.
"I have plighted my faith to you before God's altar to-day," she said,
speaking more steadily,--"because after long and earnest thought, I saw
that there was no other way of satisfying the two nations to which we
belong, and cementing the friendly relations between them. There is no
woman of Royal birth,--so it has been pointed out to me--who is so
suitable, from a political point of view, to be your wife as I. It is for the
sake of your Throne and country that you must marry--and I ask God to
forgive me if I have done wrong in His sight by wedding you simply
for duty's sake. My father, your father, and all who are connected with
our two families desire our union, and have assured me that, it is right
and good for me to give up my life to yours. All women's lives must be
martyred to the laws made by men,--or so it seems to me,--I cannot
expect to escape from the general doom apportioned to my sex. I
therefore accept the destiny which transfers me to you as a piece of
human property for possession and command,--I accept it freely, but I
will not say gladly, because that would not be true. For I do not love
you,--I cannot love you! I want you to know that, and to feel it, that you
may not ask from me what I cannot give."
There were no tears in her eyes; she looked at him straightly and
steadfastly. He, in his turn, met her gaze fully,--his face had paled a
little, and a shadow of pained regret and commiseration darkened his
handsome features.
"You love someone else?" he asked, softly.
She rose from her chair and confronted him, a glow of passionate pride

flushing her cheeks and brow.
"No!" she said--"I would not be a traitor to you in so much as a thought!
Had I loved anyone else I would never have married you,--no!-- though
you had been ten times a prince and king! No! You do not understand. I
come to you heartwhole and passionless, without a single love-word
chronicled in my girlhood's history, or a single incident you may not
know. I have never loved any man, because from my very childhood I
have hated and feared all men! I loathe their presence-- their
looks--their voices--their manners,--if one should touch my hand in
ordinary courtesy, my instincts are offended and revolted, and the sense
of outrage remains with me for days. My mother knows of this, and
says I am 'unnatural,'--it may be so. But unnatural or not, it is the truth;
judge therefore the extent of the sacrifice I make to God and our two
countries in giving myself to you!"
The prince stood amazed and confounded. Did she rave? Was she mad?
He studied her with a curious, half-doubting scrutiny, and noted the
composure of her attitude, the cold serenity of her expression,--there
was evidently no hysteria, no sur-excitation of nerves about