"The public will say little, but it will do a good deal," said Gloria grimly. "It is true we are moving in a time of great changes; it is true that for the moment you are a very popular person. But it is also true that I am a Queen and you a commoner, and Grimlanders like their Royalty undiluted. If we proclaimed ourselves man and wife we should be wise to board the Orient express at Gleis, and steam westward to Ostend or eastward to Constantinople." "And you would really--really object to that course?" asked Trafford a little sadly. "Yesterday afternoon you said, 'If the Queen of Grimland may not wed an American I will no longer be Queen of Grimland.'" "Ah, but I spoke in a moment of enthusiasm," declared Gloria unblushingly. "I had been oppressed by the nightmare of Karl's supposed assassination. The fact that he had not really been killed, that it was your ready wit that saved him from a cruel end, warmed my heart wonderfully towards you. But if you had your dream last night, so had I. Mine was less sentimental but equally pleasant. In it I saw myself Queen of Grimland, Queen of a whole country, with no district in revolt against me. Karl had been defeated, captured, and exiled. I was the reigning sovereign of a loyal and loving people." Trafford nodded gravely. "That is the dream of a Schattenberg," he said. "It is much the same dream that your father dreamed before he fell into the great sleep where there are no dreams. But it is not the dream of the woman I kissed yesterday afternoon in the Chapel Royal of the Neptunburg." Gloria's eyes fell before his steadfast gaze. Her face softened; it saddened under a wave of emotion--an emotion, the instant expression of which, though easily attributable to her actress-temperament, was nevertheless based on something far deeper. "I wonder if I am a hard woman," she began, still looking down. "Years of exile, of earning one's living on the variety stage, striving--surely these are not softening influences." She paused for him to add some sympathetic word. Whether he intended to do so or not, he forgot it on meeting the eyes that now were looking him through and through, as she continued: "But I do not unsay what I said yesterday! I really like you, immensely--and perhaps I almost love you." Trafford took her hand and kissed it rapturously; she almost snatched it away, and there was a ring of steel in the tones that now declared: "But I have tasted power, and now that the horror of Karl's death is no longer on my conscience, I wish to be the unopposed ruler of my country." "Even though the process of establishing your rule costs the lives of brave men?" Again she dropped her eyes--was silenced. She sipped her chocolate. When she spoke, it was quietly and with absolute conviction.