She was seated, pale and stately, in an antique high-backed chair, her eyes grave and sorrowful. Her manner was in singular contrast with that of the previous evening. She was no longer the “Princess Marie” of his love-dream; she seemed to have waked up to the consciousness that she was an empress, between whom and Wilfrid was an impassable gulf. He had been hoping that she might forget her love for him, and yet, now that his wish was realised, it sent a pang to his heart. “Be seated, Lord Courtenay.” Grimly contrasting this formal title with the caressingly spoken “Wilfrid” of the previous evening, he sat down and waited for her to proceed. She set her beautiful eyes upon him and said in a tone approaching almost to awe:— “Do you know who it was that came upon us last night in the Sumaroff Gardens?” _Last night!_ The event was distant by four weeks, yet she spoke of it as occurring but a few hours previously. For a moment Wilfrid stared blankly at her. Then the truth flashed upon him, and he realised the cause of her altered manner. There had happened to her mind one of those phenomena which, by no means rare, are yet extremely puzzling to students of psychology. The shock of her second immersion in the Neva had nullified the effects of the first, and had caused the return of her memory, with this defect, however, that the intervening period was a complete blank. She had no recollection whatever of the love episodes at Runö. Wilfrid’s silence, due to his surprise, drew from the Empress a reiteration of her question. “Do you know who he was?” “I shall be pleased to learn his name from you.” “He was my husband—the Czar, Alexander Paulovitch!” She watched him keenly as if to mark the effect of her words. Wilfrid, therefore, endeavoured to simulate amazement. “You are the Czarina Elizavetta?” he said in a tone of feigned incredulity. “I am,” she answered proudly. “And you have dared to address words of love to me, words heard by—by _him_!” “He will surely pardon on learning that I was ignorant of your name and rank?” “You he may pardon; will he forgive me—me, who listened to you? It was but for a minute, I know. For a minute only I was tempted to forget my duty to him, when I remembered how he was neglecting me for the smiles of Pauline de Vaucluse. One brief minute, yet I fear it will be a fatal one for me!” It was with a keen sense of anguish that Wilfrid marked her mournfulness. “Why,” she murmured, “ah! why did I withhold my name on first meeting you at the Silver Birch? It would have prevented many complications. But, believing that I should never see you again, I deemed it best to keep my identity a secret. And when I met you a second time, on that night in the Michaelovski Palace and would have told you my name, you spoke so hardly, so contemptuously of Alexander that somehow I shrank, foolishly shrank, from telling you that I was his wife.”