That night she was to sup with the archduke privately in the Schönbrunn palace. As she came in to him, he seemed conscious of some change in her which was like a startling revelation and recovery. It was the nixie of the pool he saw again--girlish, radiant, captivating. Her cheeks were like fresh roses; she sparkled over with merriment and audacity. A little staggered at first, he rallied quickly to the delight of the challenge, and responded buoyantly to her mood. He was jubilant in what he believed to be the first definite sign of her restored health. That, and not that alone. Was it conceivable that he detected here a hint that she might come to be to him something that she had never quite been yet--something which he only seemed now to recognise for the first time as a fully achieved desire, a fully satisfied hunger, a perfect realisation of a dream which had hitherto lacked its best fulfilment? He thought he would sacrifice much philosophy, much pride to ensure that gain. To be to her at last not the husband but the lover! As soon as possible, that they might be alone, he dismissed the attendants. It was a lovely moon-drowned night. The long windows of the room opened upon wide spaces of tranquil garden, whose trees and beds and slender rosaries were but soft accents on the universal glow. All liquid and milky-green, it might have been some under-world of strange waters from which they looked up, to see the bright globe just misted through that deep transparency. Somewhere a fountain falling, with a little flop and tinkle, gave voice to the illusion. The dewy lawn looked a though frosted over with moonbeams. It was a long fairy track, fading into ineffable mysteries. Isabella sat fronting her husband--fronting the open windows. She had been talking to him, sweetly, remorsefully--as one, on the prick of departure and longing for home, might talk to a generous host whom yet one was already forgetting--when all in a moment she fell silent. Something in her face startled and thrilled him. It seemed transfigured, lit up with an immortal joy. The eyes were gazing, not at him, but past him, out into the garden, as if along that luminous track some vision were advancing into their ken. Suddenly and soundlessly she rose, and, still fixedly gazing, went swiftly past him out into the night. One faint movement he made to detain her, but ineffectually. He was conscious of an inexplicable awe--a strange paralysis of will and motion. And then he heard a cry--as it were a cry of intense and loving rapture, and, instantly disenthralled by it, he started to his feet and turned. She was running into the moonlight, her arms held out as if in a very ecstasy of welcome--and yet there was nothing there. But in the moment that he moved to pursue her, actually as if she threw herself without stopping into some spirit’s lovely keeping, she pitched and fell headlong.