“There was no fleeing on the part of Lord Courtenay,” said Pauline. “He would have met your Majesty, but when on his way to the rendezvous he was seized by my orders and brought to Runö.” “An act of treason!” commented the Czar, the autocrat asserting himself above the lover. “It was the saving of your life,” was Pauline’s answer, a tacit assumption of Wilfrid’s superior swordsmanship that galled Alexander’s vanity. “Stand aside from my wife!” he cried angrily to Wilfrid. “Your wife! How can that be when but a few minutes ago you disowned her?” The charge was true and the Czar could not deny it. Scarcely knowing what to say or do in his embarrassment he looked hard at his wife, she at him. Usually so loving she now seemed a veritable piece of marble. It was impossible to understand so strange a change. Pauline in refusing his love had shown some pity for him, but Marie, in holding aloof, displayed not a trace of affection or regret; her manner was as though she had never known him. As he looked, a new feeling stole over his heart. Four weeks’ absence seemed to have made her more beautiful. With that inconsistency characteristic of human nature he now began to desire what but a short time before he had been willing to discard. Whether this change of feeling was due to Marie’s very coldness, or to Pauline’s rejection of him, or to jealousy of Wilfrid, or to all three causes working together, certain it is that Alexander found his affection, long-suspended, beginning to revive; if Marie had made but one step towards him he would have been willing to receive her. It was hard to believe that he had lost her for ever. He wished that Pauline and Wilfrid were not present that he might take her by the hand and speak the tender words of the old days; surely, then, her hardness would relent? An impulsive step forward on his part caused the Czarina to cling shudderingly to her new protector. “Wilfrid!” she gasped. “Remember your promise! Do not—do not give me up to this man. I shall die if he touch me! God forgive me ... if I do wrong! I cannot ... I cannot let you go. I am yours ... yours only.” The rigid moralist, reasoning from a distance, will say that it was Wilfrid’s duty to retire immediately in favour of the husband: but let that moralist be in the like situation, with a beautiful woman clinging to him, her lovely eyes appealing for aid, the perfume of her dress casting an intoxicating spell around her, and he would do as Wilfrid did, who, casting aside nice ethical consideration, silently vowed that Marie should not be led off against her will. The Czar stood perfectly confounded at his wife’s declaration. “She calls him ‘Wilfrid’! Says she is ‘his alone’! My God! is this the language of innocence?” “She is not in her right mind,” intervened Pauline hastily. “She——” But the emperor cut her short before she could make the necessary explanation. “It is easy to see that. He has corrupted her nature.”