softly. "The woman is stronger than the Princess where you are concerned, Gerald; or should I say weaker?" she added, smiling up to me.
"We will leave it soon for the wife to decide the term," said I, and the answer brought a vivid blush to her face. But it pleased her, for she sighed happily as she let her head sink contentedly on my shoulder.
It is six years since the stirring events happened of which I have just written, sitting at my study table in my lovely English home. As I lay the pen down and close my eyes in reverie two memory pictures come before me. The one black-edged with the gloom of sorrow and death, the other radiant with the glowing promise of since realised happiness.
In that far away Servian town the bearers have just set down a coffin by the side of a freshly-dug grave. The priest is reading the funeral service; the white-*robed choristers cluster near him; Spernow and I stand side by side at the foot of the grave listening to the words as they fall in rhythmic chant from the priest's lips, and thinking of the gallant comrade whose bones are being lowered to their last resting-place, and I of the strange secret of his hopeless, noble, self-*denying love that is being buried with him. The final moment comes. The sturdy bearers lift the coffin and lower it, and pull up the ropes with a rasp that sounds like the severing of all hope; the earth is cast down by the priest and falls clattering on the lid, and the service goes on to its melancholy finish. The priest pronounces the last words of prayer and blessing; stands a moment with covered face in silent prayer, and then turns away, followed by the little choir. Spernow and I move forward to take the last look at the coffin—a
