with a vivid red colour in her cheeks. Then she walked across to Victoria, lifted one of her hands from the table, and kissed it.

"You're going to have tea with me to-day, children," said she, "and we'll play games afterward. Augustin shall play at not being a king."

I remember well the tea we had and the games that followed, wherein we all played at being what we were not, and for an evening cheated fate of its dues. My mother was merriest, for over Victoria and myself there hung a veil of unreality, a consciousness that indeed we played and set aside for an hour only the obstinate claims of the actual. But we were all merry; and when we parted—for my mother had a dinner-party—we both kissed her heartily; me she kissed often. I thought that she wanted to ask me again whether I liked the Countess better than her, but was afraid to risk the question. What I wanted to say was that I liked none better if she would be always what she was this evening; but I found no skill adequate to a declaration of affection so conditional. It would be to make a market of my kisses, and I had not yet come to the age for such bargains.

Then we were left alone, Victoria and I, to sit together for a while in the dusk; and, sitting there, we totted up that day's gains. They were uncertain, yet seemed great. All that had passed I told Victoria, save what in loyalty to my countess I might not; Victoria imparted to me the story of the knuckle-rapping. For her an added joy lay in the fact that on this occasion, if ever, she had deserved the affliction; she had been gloriously naughty, and gloried in it now; did not her sinfulness enhance the significance of this revolution? So carried away were we by our triumph that now again, after a long interval, we allowed our imagination to paint royalty in glowing colours, and our Arabian Nights and fairy tales seemed at last not altogether cunningly wrought deceptions. When we had gone to bed, again we met, I creeping into her room, and rousing her to ask whether in truth a new age had come and the yoke of Krak been broken from off our backs. Victoria sat up in bed and discussed the problem gravely. For me she was sanguine, for herself less so; for, said she, they go on worrying the girls for ever so long. "She won't rap your knuckles any more," I suggested, fastening on a certain and tangible advantage. Victoria agreed that in all likelihood her knuckles would henceforth be inviolate; and she did not deny such gain as lay there. Thus in the end I won her to cheerfulness, and we parted merrily, declaring to one another that we were free; and I knew that in some way the pretty American countess had lent a hand to knocking off our chains.

Free! A wonderful word that, whether you use it of a child, a man, a state, a world, an universe! That evening we seemed free. In after-days I received from old Hammerfeldt (a great statesman, as history will one day allow) some lectures on the little pregnant, powerful, empty word. He had some right to speak of freedom; he had seen it fought for by Napoleon, praised by Talleyrand, bought by Castlereagh, interpreted by Metternich. Should he not then know what it was, its value, its potency, and its sweetness, why men died for it, and delicate women who loved them cheered them on? Once also in later years a beautiful woman cried to me, with white arms outstretched, that to be free was life, was all in all, the heart's one satisfaction. Her I pressed, seeking to know wherein lay the attraction and allurement that fired her to such extravagance. And I told her what the Prince had said to me half-way through his pinch of snuff.

"'Sire,' said he, 'to become free—what is it? It is to change your master.'"

The lady let her arms fall to her side, reflected a moment, smiled, and said:

"The Prince was no fool, sire."

As the result of this day that I have described, I had become free. I had changed my master.

We did not, however, pay any more visits to the Countess.

CHAPTER III.

SOME SECRET OPINIONS.

Even such results as might be looked for on Prince von Hammerfeldt's theory of the meaning of freedom were in my case arrested and postponed by a very serious illness which attacked me on the threshold of my eleventh year. We had gone to Schloss Artenberg, according to our custom in the summer; it was holiday-time; Krak was away, the talked-of tutor had not arrived. The immediate fruit of this temporary emancipation was that I got my feet very wet with dabbling about the river, and, being under no sterner control than Victoria's, lingered long in this condition. Next day I was kept in bed, and Victoria was in sore disgrace. To be brief, the mischief attacked my lungs. Soon I was seriously ill; a number of grave, black-coated gentlemen came and went about the bed on which I lay for several weeks. Of this time I have many curious impressions; most of them centre round my mother. She slept in my room, and I believe hardly ever left me. I used to wake from uneasy sleep and look across to her bed; always in a few moments she also awoke, came and gave me what I needed or asked for, and then would throw a dressing-gown round her and walk softly to and fro on bare feet, with her long fair hair hanging about her shoulders. Her face looked different in those days; yet it was not soft as I have seen mothers' faces when their sons lay sick or dead, but rather excited, urgent, defiant; the lips were set close, and the eyes gleamed. She did not supplicate God, she fought fate, or, if God and fate be one, then it was God whom she fought; and her battle was untiring. I knew from her face that I might die, but, so far as I can recall my mood, I was more curious about the effect of such an event on her and on Victoria than concerning its import to myself. I asked her once what would happen if I died; would Victoria be queen? She forbade me to ask the question, but I pressed it, and she answered hastily, "Yes, yes, but you won't die, Augustin; you shan't die." I was not allowed to see very much of Victoria, but a day or two afterward she sat with me alone for a little while, and I told her she would be queen if I died.

"No. Mother would kill me," she said with absolute conviction, in no resentment or fear, but in a simple certitude.

"Why? Because you didn't bring me in when I got wet?"

"Yes—if you died of it," nodded Victoria.

"I don't believe it," I said boldly. "Why shouldn't she like you to be queen?"

"She'd hate it," said Victoria.

"She doesn't hate me being king."

"You're a boy."

I wondered dimly then, and I have wondered since (hardly with more knowledge), what truth or whether any lay behind my sister's words; she believed that, apart from any unjust blame for my misfortune, her mother would not willingly see her queen. Yet why not? I have a son, and would be glad to lay down my burden and kiss his hand as he sat on the throne. Are all fathers such as I? Nay, and are all mothers such as mine? I know not; and if there be any position that opens a man's mind to the Socratic wisdom of knowing his own ignorance it is that in which my life has been spent. But it can hardly be that the curious veiled opposition which from about this time began to exist between my mother and my sister was altogether singular. It was a feeling not inconsistent with duty, with punctilious observance, not even with love; but there was in it a sort of jealousy, of assertion and counter-assertion. It seemed to me, as I became older, to have roots deeper than any accidental occurrence or environment, and, so far, I came near to the difficult analysis, to spring from the relation of one woman who was slowly but surely being