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Remote, muffled in leagues of snow, and alive with hungry passions and unscrupulous strength, the Castle of Sagan did not, on that wild January night, offer desirable housing to the Grand Duke of Maäsau. He had yet some thirty hours to spend as his cousin's guest before he could return to his capital without showing suspicion or giving offence.
Her heart seemed in her ears and answered to every sound. And all the while in the scattered rooms and shadowy passages the drama which involved her life was being slowly played out. Below on the ground floor of the tower Elmur and Sagan sat together.
'Count Sagan is colonel-in-chief of the Guard? he asked, and the question seemed to fit in with her train of thought. She made no immediate response, but with a light touch on his arm led him to a flower-banked apartment, about which a few couples were scattered in various convenient nooks. She sank upon a sequestered settee, and made room for him beside her.
Left alone in the great dim vaulted chamber, Sagan stood upright and watched the door through which they had filed out, and there came upon him in the dying daylight a terrible moment, such as all uncontrolled natures must at times know. A sense of the futility of all things, a knowledge that life has lost its taste, the hideousness of finally baffled desire.
"Condense yourself," urges he always on Henri; "go forward on the Russians; attack sharply this Corps, that Corps, while they are still separate and on march!" Henri did condense himself, "took post between Sagan and Sprottau; post at Frankfurt," poor Frankfurt, is it to have a Kunersdorf or Zorndorf every year, then?
I must look to you for protection; I have no one else in the whole world. She was very near him, her little cold hand had caught his in her vehemence; she looked apprehensively behind her, and then spoke low in his ear. 'I am afraid of my husband. He wishes to be rid of me I have seen it in his eyes. Sagan will kill me! Do you remember the night of the ball, when I gave you the firefly?
'I am sure that the air of Sagan is as loyal as ourselves, and will do for you all that we should wish it to do. For answer the Duke shook his head feebly; and, calling Colendorp to his side, passed up the long hall through a rustling silence. Although secretly dismayed at the effect produced by her rash championship of Madame de Sagan, Valerie kept up a semblance of self-possession.
Elmur, apparently forgetful of the deep personal devotion he had so lately manifested, was conversing with a group of Maäsaun nobles, his back turned conveniently towards her. Sagan had disappeared, and not one of those whom she knew so well, and who, ten minutes ago, would have felt honoured by seeking her, but now seemed too deeply engaged to notice that she stood alone.
'Has the initial fault of nationality. However, he goes to Sagan. The mist cleared as the sun rose higher until, by noon, the sky was of a pale radiant blue laced with a delicate broidery of white wind-scattered clouds. Looking westward the dark river wound away to the sea, ringed here and there by the highly decorated bridges of light-toned granite peculiar to Maäsau.
Had Valerie not met Rallywood, she might never have known as much about herself as she discovered during her visit to Sagan; as matters stood, however, the weak point in M. Selpdorf's theory was already under strain. The Chancellor usually breakfasted alone with his daughter.
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