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Say something!" Gretchen was hanging to the bars now; her body, held in the vise of growing terror, was almost a dead weight. "Gretchen, forgive me!" despairingly. "He asks me to forgive him!" dully. "For what?" "For being a villain! Yes," his voice keen with agony. "I am the king of Jugendheit. But am I less a man for that? Ah, God help me, I have a right to love like other men!
And these two children: which is mine?" To the king of Jugendheit the ceiling reeled and the floor revolved under his feet. "Villain, what have you to say? What was your purpose?" How many years, thought Herbeck, had he been preparing for this moment? How long had he been steeling his heart against this very scene? Futile dream! He drew himself together with a supreme effort.
"So your royal highness will understand," said Herbeck, "that it was the simplest move I could make, and the safest. Were it known, or had it been known this morning, that the king of Jugendheit and the prince regent had entered Dreiberg in disguise and had been lodged in the Stein-schloss, there would have been a serious riot in the city. So I had you arrested as spies.
Anybody might have been curious about the doings of the king of Jugendheit and his uncle the prince regent. Because the king hunted in Bavaria with the crown prince, and his uncle conferred with the king of Prussia in Berlin, it did not necessarily follow that Leopold Dietrich was a spy. Gretchen was just. She would hear his defense before she judged him.
"Count, must I tell you again not to broach that subject? There can be no alliance between Ehrenstein and Jugendheit." "Why?" asked Count von Herbeck, chancellor, coolly returning the angry flash from the ducal eyes. "There are a thousand reasons why, but it is not my purpose to name them." "Name only one, your Highness, only one." "Will that satisfy you?" "Perhaps."
The Black Eagle," he added, in an undertone; "it is unchanged these twenty years. Heaven send that the beds are softer than aforetime!" They were passing a clock-mender's shop. The man from Jugendheit peered in the window, which had not been cleaned in an age, but there was no clock in sight to give him warning of the time, and he dared not now look at his watch.
"Here I am, Leopold!" the goose-girl cried, pressing her body against the bars and thrusting her hands through them. "The devil!" murmured the man in the other cell. "You here, Gretchen?" The king covered her hands with passionate kisses. "Yes, yes! They have made a dreadful mistake. You are no spy from Jugendheit." "No, Gretchen," said the voice from the next cell. "He is far worse than that.
As the first was truthful, there is no reason to believe this one to be false." Herbeck read, and he was genuinely startled. "What do you say to that?" triumphantly. "This," with that rapid decision which made him the really great tactician he was. "Let them go quietly back to Jugendheit." "No!" blazed the duke. "Are we rich enough for war?" "Always questions, questions!
The office of the American consulate in the Adlergasse ran from the front to the rear of the building. Carmichael's desk overlooked the street. But whenever a flying dream came to him he was wont to take his pipe to the chair by the rear window, whence he could view the lofty crests of the Jugendheit mountains.
She met his piercing glance with that mild duplicity known only to women. "He is a gentleman, he amuses me, and there is no harm. Grooms are always with us. And often he is only one of a party." "It is politics again, your Highness; I merely offer the suggestion." "Marry me to the king of Jugendheit, if you will, but in this I shall have my way." But she laughed as she laid down this law.
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