"I have always delighted to live in a world of my own making," she said frankly. "There are days together when I believe myself to be some one else and act and do that which I believe they would have acted and done. The theatre stood to me for a very heaven of self-deceptions. I read of it in books, dreamed of it in my sleep, tried to picture it as it must be. Oh, yes, I have spoken my own plays aloud beneath the trees of this Park so many days. I was Di Vernon, my Lady Beatrice, Viola, Desdemona, all the young girls you can name in the books. Sometimes I had the idea to run away and hide myself from everyone in that great picture land my visions showed to me. No one here could share my thoughts. My father adored me, but has never understood me. To him, I am the child of the woman he loved beyond anything on earth. He guards me as though some change would come upon me if he ceased his vigilance. Then irony appears and says it is my father who is changing. I have been aware of it ever since Count Odin visited us. These wild men have brought misfortune to our house and God knows where we are drifting. I thought at one time that if I married the Count that would be the end of everything. I can believe it no longer. My father is tempted to sacrifice me; but he would regret it all his life if he did so. Can you blame me if I think of London again--seriously and forever!" Gavin answered her with difficulty. He knew so few of the facts of her story as yet that his common sense warned him to speak guardedly. "I should be the last to blame you," he said slowly; "but surely there is an alternative? We take a desperate step when other and wiser roads are closed to us. Let me try to understand it better. Count Odin, you say, has some hold upon your father----" "I did not say so, surely----" "Then I imagine as much. He has some hold upon your father, obtained by that which happened in Bukharest many years ago. Do you know precisely what his claim is?" "His father's liberty. The old Chevalier Georges Odin is a prisoner in one of the mines on the borders of the Black Sea. The Count declares that this is my father's work. I cannot tell you if it be true or false. If it is true, I will see that we leave no stone unturned to set Georges Odin free. I wish I could be so sure that his liberty will bring no peril upon my father." "The men were enemies, then?" "I have understood as much. They were rivals for my dead mother's hand." "And your father profited by his enemy's political misfortune?" "I must believe it, since he is afraid to give this man his liberty." "A natural fear--in Roumania; not, I think, in England. Will you let me ask how your marriage with the young Count would help your father in his difficulty?" "I do not know, unless it is assumed that as Georges Odin's daughter-in-law, I should pay the debt my father owes." "And save him from a purely imaginary danger?"