"It will not improve your physical eyes, Mademoiselle, but it will open your spiritual eyes to the world; just now your heart is blind." To this Ragna found no answer; she stood silent, her face turned up to the moon, still looking vainly for the Lovers. Mirko stood gazing at her tempted by her fairness, her simplicity, and the moonlight. "Do you realize the delightfulness of this episode?" he asked her abruptly. "It will be like an oasis in the desert to look back on. I should like you to forget this evening, that we are anything but just our two selves; there is no Prince, there is no Fröken Andersen, we are just you and I and nothing more. Yesterday we met, to-morrow we part, probably for ever, so that there can be no thought of past or future to embarrass us. There is no yesterday and no to-morrow, no time and no limitation of space; we are all the world, we are quite alone and detached from everything, you and I and the moon!" His eyes were fastened on hers and held them; she could not have moved away had she wished. She answered in an embarrassed way: "You wish to stop the hands of the clock for this evening?" "Exactly--with your help." The romance of the situation appealed to her. "The clock has stopped," she announced gravely. "Thank you," he murmured raising her hand to his lips. Ragna laughed uneasily; it seemed to her that she was living in some fairy tale. The Prince led her to a deck chair and drew up another beside it. From where they sat they could see the moon and the light upon the water, but they were screened from the companion-way door, and indeed from most of the deck, by the ventilator of the saloon and the shadow of a life-boat. It was unusually warm for the North Sea, especially for so early in the season, and Ragna found her heavy cloak oppressive. "Take care you do not get cold," said the Prince as he helped her to loosen the clasp at the neck. The whiteness of her throat seemed like marble in the moonlight. Her hook had caught in her lace collar, and in disentangling it the Prince's fingers brushed her bosom; they gave her a tingling sensation and she started up. "I beg your pardon," said Mirko; "it was not intentional, but if it had been would you resent it? Where is the harm, are we not friends?" "Friends," said Ragna, "just friends. You must not do things like that." "Then give me your hand. Has anyone ever read your palm? No?" He took her hand lying idly on a fold of her cloak and held it up in the moonlight. "I cannot see the lines, it is too dark, but your hand is beautiful, so soft, so tapering!" He drew the tips of his fingers over her palm and had the satisfaction of seeing her shiver. She tried to draw her hand away, but he kept it. "Ragna, little Ragna, there are many things, I should like to say to you, but I am afraid you would misunderstand me. Do you know what you are? You are the Sleeping Beauty, you are asleep, no one has come yet to wake you; you are waiting for the Prince."