Clementina

"The Princess Sophia Dorothea was visiting the Duke of Würtemberg,"

Wogan explained, and Clementina nodded.

"Count Otto von Ahlen, my host," he continued, "had a momentary thought

that I was Königsmarck mysteriously returned as he had mysteriously

vanished; and through these thirty years' retention of his youth, Count

Otto could never think of Königsmarck but as a man young and tossed in a

froth of passion. He would have it to the end that I had escaped from

such venture as had Königsmarck; he would have it my wounds were the

mere offset to a love well worth them; he would envy me. 'Passion,'

said he, 'without passion there can be no great thing.'"

"And the saying lived in your thoughts," cried Clementina. "I do not

wonder. 'Without passion there can be no great thing!' Can books teach

a man so much?"

"Nay, it was an hour's talk with Königsmarck which set the old man's

thoughts that way; and though Königsmarck talked never so well, I would

not likely infer from his talk an eternal and universal truth. Count

Otto left me alone while he fetched me food, and he left me in a panic."

"A panic?" said Clementina, with a little laugh. "You!"

"Yes. That first mistake of me for Königsmarck, that insistence that my

case was Königsmarck's--"

"There was a shadow of truth in it--even then?" said Clementina,

suddenly leaning across the table towards him. Wogan strove not to see

the light of her joy suddenly sparkling in her eyes.

"I sat alone, feeling the ghost of Königsmarck in the room with me," he

resumed quickly, and his voice dropped, and he looked round the little

cabin. Clementina looked round quickly too. Then their eyes met again.

"I heard his voice menacing me. 'For love of a queen I lived. For love

of a queen I died most horribly; and it would have gone better with the

queen had she died the same death at the same time--'" And Clementina

interrupted him with a cry which was fierce.

"Ah, who can say that, and know it for the truth--except the Queen? You

must ask her in her prison at Ahlden, and that you cannot do. She has

her memories maybe. Maybe she has built herself within these thirty

years a world of thought so real, it makes her gaolers shadows, and

that prison a place of no account, save that it gives her solitude and

is so more desirable than a palace. I can imagine it;" and then she

stopped, and her voice dropped to the low tone which Wogan had used.