The second officer bowed. The man at the table rose, and went out into the street. He took his way to where the palace rose, and then skirted along the wall of its gardens till he came to the little gate. Here stood two horses and at their heads a man. "It is well. You can go," said the student; and he was left alone with the horses. They were good horses for a student to possess. The thought perhaps crossed their owner's mind, for he laughed softly as he looked at them. Then he also fell to thinking that the hours were long; and a fear came suddenly upon him that she would not come. It was in these last hours that doubts crept in, and she was not there to drive them away. Would the great trial fail? Would she shrink at the last? But he would not think it of her, and he was smiling again, when the clock of the cathedral struck two, and told him that no more than one hour now parted her from him. For she would come; the princess would come to him, the student, led by the vision of that cottage in the dream. Would she come? She would come; she had risen from her knees, and moved to and fro, in cautious silence, making her last preparations. She had written a word of farewell for the brother she loved--for some day, of course, Rudolf would forgive her--and she had ready all that she took with her--the five hundred crowns, one ring that she would give her lover, some clothes to serve till his loving labor furnished more. That night she had wept, and she had laughed; but now she neither wept nor laughed, but there was a great pride in her face and gait. And she opened the door of her room, and walked down the great staircase, under the eyes of crowned kings who hung framed upon the walls. And as she went she seemed indeed their daughter. For her head was erect and her eye set firm in haughty dignity. Who dared to say that she did anything that a king's daughter should not do? Should not a woman love? Love should be her diadem. And so with this proud step she came through the gardens of the palace, looking neither to right nor left nor behind, but with her face set straight for the little gate, and she walked as she had been accustomed to walk when all Strelsau looked on her and hailed her as its glory and its darling. The sentry slept, or seemed to sleep. Her face was not even veiled when she opened the little gate. She would not veil her proud face. It was his to look on now when he would; and thus she stood for an instant in the gateway, while he sprang to her, and, kneeling, carried her hand to his lips. "You are come?" he cried; for though he had believed, yet he wondered. "I am come," she smiled. "Is not the word of a princess sure? Ah, how could I not come?" "See, love," said he, rising, "day dawns in royal purple for you, and golden love for me."