"Will you come?" he breathed; and for a pregnant second the world of things material rolled back from his consciousness, and left him standing alone in space with his fate. For the strange brain was playing tricks with him,--as big, uncontrolled brains do with impulsive, ill-balanced people. His five senses were in abeyance, or warped beyond all present usefulness. He saw a pair of eyes as points of light in a world of darkness, but all sense of reality had utterly deserted him. He was as he had been in the Chapel Royal when his bride had made her hesitating avowal of a half-passion. A sheet of flame seemed to be passing through his body, a roseate glow suffused his vision; he never realised that he was uttering a beloved name in a voice of thunder and grasping a beloved object with no little strength. But ecstatic entrancements, however subliminal, yield ultimately to rude physical shocks, and dimly and slowly the world of dreams vanished and he became conscious that someone was hitting him violently on the back. Turning round with half-dazed eyes, he found himself confronted with the stern lineaments of Father Bernhardt. The ex-priest, clad in a military overcoat and high leggings, and powdered with still unmelted snow, carried mingled wrath and astonishment in his countenance. "_Sunde und Siechheit!_" he cried. "Are you, too, an _absintheur_, Captain Trafford?" For the moment Trafford had not the vaguest idea what an _absintheur_ might be, but he replied vaguely in the negative. Bernhardt uttered an oath. "I called you three times by name," he said, "and I struck you three times on the back before you would condescend to pay me any attention." "I apologise," said Trafford; "I was thinking of other things." "You were in a delirium," retorted Bernhardt. "The fiend of Tobit----" "Oh, hang the fiend of Tobit!" interrupted Trafford hotly. "I may be a lunatic, Bernhardt, but I'm a healthy-minded lunatic, if there is such a thing. I was making love, and we'll leave it at that, if you please, and drop all talk of delirium and fiends." "I was finding an excuse for you." "I don't need one, thank you." Trafford, as is the way with interrupted lovers, was in an irritable mood, and being so did not notice that Bernhardt was really angry. "Indeed you do!" retorted the ex-priest. "I forbade you expressly to see the Queen, and I find you dining alone with her, and making violent love to her in addition." "I received a command to dine." "And a command to make love?" sneered Bernhardt. "That is my affair." Bernhardt turned from the irate American to the confused Gloria, and there was little deference in his regard. "Your Majesty does not value your reputation too highly," he said. "As long as you play at being a maid it is as well to act like a maid." "My reputation can look after itself," she retorted with dignity.