Stanief did not ride home that morning with the cheerful Vasili and bored Rosal, who awaited him. As he came down the wide steps between the usual parting, obsequious crowds, a girl leaned from a victoria that stood in the place of his own carriage,--Iría, opposite her the pale young Countess Marya. "Will you ride with me, monseigneur?" invited the Gentle Princess, with her deliciously confiding glance and smile. "We were on the promenade, and I thought perhaps you would have finished--" [Illustration: "Will you ride with me, Monseigneur?"] A knot of early daffodils was tucked in her girdle, the spring breeze fluttered a bright strand of crinkled bronze against her brighter cheek; all the youth of the year was in the happy face she lifted to him. Stanief paused with his foot on the step to look at her, many thoughts meeting in his drowsily-brilliant eyes. "Thank you," he answered. "I wonder if you will ever come for me again, Iría, after I have finished here indeed." An innocent surprise and pleasure dawned in her expression. "I will come every day, if you like, monseigneur," she offered. "I did not know you cared." He took the seat beside her, with a courteous salute to Marya. "You are gracious, as always. I did not mean exactly that, although you can not guess how pleasant it was to find you here to-day. Live your pretty routine and fancies, Duchess of Dreams, and give me the alms of time you can not use." They spoke in Iría's soft native tongue, which the Countess Marya did not understand and which Stanief had learned long before in some of the _Nadeja's_ nomadic voyages. Always gentle to the gentle Iría, to-day his voice carried an added tenderness which stirred her to vague unrest and wistfulness. "You do not mean that," she said, troubled. "How should I have any time that is not yours, monseigneur? And my fancies--you can not know how many of them are wishes that I might prove a little, only a little, of all your kindness makes me feel. I wish, how much I wish, that I could do something for you!" The victoria was rolling through the busy, cheerful streets; vehicles making way for it in respectful haste, people saluting with more than mere formality and following the Regent with grateful eyes. Stanief's city, Stanief's country this, drawn by him out of anarchy into order, out of suffering into peace. The people knew, and he knew. He looked across it all now before answering, battling with fierce loneliness and rebellion. "Iría, what I have done for you is nothing. You are my wife," there was no mockery in the quietly spoken word, "and claim all I can give. But, since we are alone except for each other and have been placed together, would you care to save my pride some day by stepping at my side out of this court? By giving me the dignity of holding my household above the wreck?" Startled and dismayed, she turned to him. "Monseigneur, I do not understand! You, you to speak of wreck! Oh, and you ask me that, you doubt?"