Well, now, I'll tell you a fairy tale. We two pretty orphan children were just planted down here in this enchanted castle for each other. We were obliged to come together here, even if long ago we had not been two hearts united somewhere else. The colonel, as a matter of fact, wedded us from the first. The only pity is that your marriage contract with him did not make provision for the circumstances. But there it is, and we have no choice but to resort to some secret arrangement between ourselves. Don't you see, dearest child, we are both tacking the same way on life's ocean. The risks you and I have to run are one and the same. So buck up, and let's go it! We are poor vagabonds, anyhow." "Thank you, I am not a vagabond!" Lilly flared up. "I have my pride and my honour to maintain, and even if I have sinned, I know how to die for my sins." "Dying is not so easy," he remarked; "generally the opportunity is lacking, and then when it comes one funks it." She felt her old burning desire to protect him from his own low estimate of himself. "You don't mean what you say!" she cried. "You are amongst the boldest and bravest of men, and would face death for the sake of your honour, I know. And if you liked you might have the whole world at your feet. I shall never cease to remind you of that. I have not sacrificed myself for you for nothing. I will interest myself in you till you get back your faith in yourself, till you feel you are once more on the upward path. I will share all your trials and temptations, and stand between you and evil. What am I here for except for your sake--yours?" At that moment her enthusiasm for him was so great that she could gladly have thrown herself under the hoofs of his horse, and when she compared this with her feelings when they had first met that day, she could hardly comprehend how it was that he had appeared to her in so alienated and repulsive a light. "You are a most emotional creature," he said; "it is a good thing that the creepers hide your balcony so effectually." "What do you mean to imply by that?" she faltered, in shocked foreboding. "And the ladder luckily is still in its place," he went on, "ready to be used. The creepers might break this time and no one would notice anything amiss, not even the Schwertfeger, eh?" His light eyelashes blinked at her persuasively. She did not know which way to look, she felt so dreadfully ashamed. "Never, never will I have anything to do with you again!" she cried. "I swear by all the saints I never will! I should loathe myself if I did, and despise you with all my heart and soul!" She finished with an exclamation of disgust. He merely shrugged his shoulders. "A pity," he said; "it would have been a splendid opportunity ..." * * * * *