Profoundly astonished, the prince was silent. He had not thought this girl of nineteen possessed any force of character or any intellectual power of reasoning. He had judged her as no doubt glad to become a great princess and a possible future queen, and he had not given her credit for any finer or higher feeling. “You know,”--she continued--“you must surely know--” here, despite the strong restraint she put upon herself, her voice broke, and her slight figure swayed in its white draperies as if about to fall. She looked at him with a sense of rising tears in her throat,--tears of which she was ashamed,--for she was full of a passionate emotion too strong for weeping--a contempt of herself and of him, too great for mere clamour. Was he so much of a man in the slow thick density of his brain she thought, as to have no instinctive perception of her utter misery? He hastened to her and tried to take her hands, but she drew herself away from him and sank down in a chair as if exhausted. “You are tired!” he said kindly--“The tedious ceremonial--the still more tedious congratulations,--and the fatiguing journey from the capital to this place have been too much for your strength. You must rest!” “It is not that!”--she answered--“not that! I am not tired,--but--but--I cannot say my prayers tonight till you know my whole heart!” A curious reverence and pity moved him. All day long he had been in a state of resentful irritation,--he had loathed himself for having consented to marry this girl without loving her,--he had branded himself inwardly as a liar and hypocrite when he had sworn his marriage vows ‘before God,’ whereas if he truly believed in God, such vows taken untruthfully were mere blasphemy;--and now she herself, a young thing tenderly brought up like a tropical flower in the enervating hot-house atmosphere of Court life, yet had such a pure, deep consciousness of God in her, that she actually could not pray with the slightest blur of a secret on her soul! He waited wonderingly.