She slept well, and late; then being already long past her early hour of rising, lay for a time, half in pleasure of that narrow world wherein she still could confuse dreams and life, half in dread of the realities into which she must step with her clothes. Should she go to Budapest that day? It occurred to her too late that it is more difficult to return to the associations identified with the intense or tragic moments of life even than to remain among them. Should she stay in Vienna for a few days? The Hofburg had never seemed so dreary; her own rooms were musty and chill. In Buda, at least, she would be companioned, and she should find novel work to do immediately upon her return. She remembered Fessenden’s early suggestion to conciliate the Independents by inviting their wives to the palace. Many of these men were her slaves, but of them several would not come to Buda, and others held wholly aloof. She should persuade to her cause, as soon as she returned, the patriotism of the influential women of the aristocracy. And there were charities to organize, subtler methods of conquest to be conceived, now that society had been won by gayeties and pleasure. As soon as the winter broke she would make her progress through the country; she had made the impression she desired on the crowds that had met her at the stations in Transylvania. It was all easy enough, this brilliant preliminary, but what of the future? Would she have her great public career, and would it console her for the renunciation of what she wanted at that moment more than the career of a Maria Theresia or even the triumph of cold duty? As she awoke fully the tenderness and passion, roused and stimulated, yet so little satisfied in these past weeks, which for two days and nights had been quiescent under the sullen despair of her brain, now, after long hours of refreshing sleep, rushed in tumult through all her channels of emotion; and all her soul and body shook with longing and regret. Why should she not see him once more? And would it always be once more, and once more? Would her life be bearable if his expulsion from it were final? She had not seen so far into the future while with him, but now it looked as empty and cold as space. _Could this be the end?_ She almost cried the words aloud as she sprang from her bed in a frantic desire to take some step--at once--before it was too late. He could not have sailed, for he had told her he should spend some days in Berlin, and his yacht was at Trieste. She should see him again if the world stood still. In all the emotions that had rent her, even after the terrible deaths of her brother and mother, she had never so faced the awful vista of finality; and she discovered that it was the one for which she had no power in her to endure. Of course he must leave her at last, but not yet! It is all very well for the old and the wise to argue with the accents of fatigue that love is not the only thing in life; so it is not, for those that