The days passed and the lover gave no sign that he was as distraught as the prisoner. There are times in life when one lives very fast. The first forty-eight hours of her imprisonment consumed the mental energies of months. As the first excitement decreased, and with it something of the novelty of her situation, her mind was free again for thoughts and dreams she had been half glad to forget, so many were the pangs they had held. And in the train of love came all the doubts and tragic conceptions with which a woman cursed with imagination never fails to torment herself. The women for whom men would most willingly die--if there be yet that spirit abroad in the world--women who in the end are most sure to discard the still ardent lover, often suffer in their imaginary tragedies as intensely as their more constant and less valued sisters in their hopeless realities. Ranata was not the woman to love and tire, but her imagination was the least controlled of her faculties. She descended into the very depths of depression and convinced herself that Fessenden Abbott had taken her at her word and returned to America before any one had suspected her imprisonment and sent him warning. (The faithful maid had not dared to confess her eavesdropping.) She might be confined here until she lost her reason, and he would drown his thoughts of her in the hideous details of business, or in those great schemes of his, remembering her only as a purified spirit; likely enough, wearying of the cold picture. She forgot her ideals, even her instinctive knowledge of him, and treated his vows with cynicism. What man in this practical modern world--and the world was practical and modern outside of the Hofburg--would be faithful to the woman hidden forever from his sight? He would marry, of course, and forget her; why, indeed, should he not? And what if he did? There were times when she hated him, when in the prolonged contemplation of his commonplace infidelity she despised him as unworthy of her, and hardened her heart until she doubted if it ever would melt again, even if he suddenly appeared and took her in his arms. These crises in a woman’s brain are very unfortunate, and when men are wiser they will study to prevent them. After all, it is the psychical experience that tells, not the visible cause, and the scars may be deep and callous. In this case poor Fessenden was helpless, and Ranata had still felt and known so little that she had elasticity enough to survive several such crises without the worst effects; but if life had added bitterness to her store of experience she might have come out of her ordeal with her best prospect for happiness blasted.