“True, Tiretta--that is quite true. I cannot command love. I might possess, and murder to possess its form: still not to me but to the shadow of the dead would belong all that was worth possessing in it. Have you deserved death? I do not know. I only know I would not have the thing I seek made unattainable; and that would it become, were I to kill you. Yet what to do? Tell me, my friend, for I am in your hands.” “In mine!” Emotion, sudden and startled, shook the inflexible voice. “Tiretta!” The young prince put a hand, quite movingly and unexpectedly, on his erst-favourite’s shoulder. The action, generous and manly, spoke the real heart under all its philosophic veneer. “Admit,” said Joseph: “have you not a little exaggerated the cause in order to justify the end? The name you gave yourself----” “It was given me, sir, by implication.” “By whom or what? The sweetest and most innocent lips in the world? You wrong them, I am sure, even more than you do yourself or me. But the fault was mine, you say; yet I had always honestly thought you insusceptible to such emotions--a dreamer, a wooer of abstractions. Well, I was mistaken, it seems. Your strength was unequal to the task my faith in it imposed on you. Which of us was most to blame--I in directing, you in accepting? What need to quarrel about that now? We have made a botch of it between us, and the thing for us to discuss is how best to mend a lamentable case. Will you not tell me the whole truth, Tiretta, my friend?” “Before God, I will.” The man was profoundly touched. “Then, say, are you to her what she is to you?” “That were impossible.” “Nay, you equivocate.” “On my soul, then, I believe that, heaven helping us, she would give me her hand to-morrow.” A slight tremor seemed to take the archduke’s features. He stood back, quitting his hold on the other. A minute’s tense silence ensued. “Well,” he said at length, just repressing a sigh. “I repeat I am in your hands.” Again, impulsively, he advanced and renewed his caressing touch. “There can be no issue but one. You know it, Tiretta--man, you know it. We are all in the bonds of fate, and helpless. Now, listen and believe me. If it were possible, I would yield her to you. It is not possible. Then would you condemn your friend to a loveless match?” “What would you have me do?” His voice was quite wrung and broken. “I would have you,” said Joseph, “atone, in the only way you can, the wrong you have done, not to me but to her.” “I am to go--never to see her again--to leave her believing me faithless?” “Better a faithless lover than a faithless wife. So only can you heal the wound you have inflicted. For her sake, Tiretta.” “Why do you not call in your guards, and have me silenced for ever? I will make no resistance.” “Because I am human, though a prince, Tiretta.”