"I seldom forget a name," he said, "but I--before we go in, won't you please remind me of yours?"

Mary Alice laughed. "Your Majesty has never heard my name," she said, "and I can't go in; I'm not of the party." And she explained.

"I see," he said. "I shall have to thank the d.u.c.h.ess. I have had a most refreshing quarter of an hour."

"I'm glad," said Mary Alice, simply. "I felt afraid, at first--as nearly everybody does, I suppose. And then I thought how dreadful that must be--to have every one afraid of you, when you're really a very nice, gentle person--I mean----! Well, I guess Your Majesty knows what I mean. And then I remembered my Secret----"

"Secret?"

And so, of course, she had to tell. It was rather a long story, hurry as she would, because the King interrupted with so many questions.

But she wouldn't tell what the Secret was until "the very last thing."

"Um," said the King, when she had finally divulged it. That was all he said; but the way he said it made Mary Alice know that the Secret was right.

XI

A MEETING AND A PARTING

The next day was full of activities which kept the house guests far afield. But Mary Alice had an exciting day at home; for the King had spoken to the d.u.c.h.ess about her and asked to have her presented to him that evening.

The Duke and d.u.c.h.ess had spent a fortune on the entertainment of their King; had provided for his beguiling every costly diversion that could be thought of. But they had not been able to give him anything new, and they felt that he was enduring the visit amiably rather than actually enjoying it. It remained, apparently, for the Girl from Nowhere to give him real pleasure.

So the d.u.c.h.ess--secretly sympathetic--left orders with her French maid that Mary Alice was to be made ready to see the King.

Mary Alice chose the simplest thing that rigorous French maid would allow and kept as close as possible to her own individual and unpretending style. But even then, she was a pretty resplendent young person as she stole timidly down to find the d.u.c.h.ess and be presented to the King.

The guests were a.s.sembled in the great drawing-room, and Mary Alice was frightened almost to death when she saw the splendour of the scene and realized what part she had to play in it.

Then, in a daze, she was swept forward and presented, and found herself looking into eyes that smiled as with an old friendliness. So she smiled back again, and soon forgot the onlookers, answering His Majesty's kindly questions.

[Ill.u.s.tration: ". . . found herself looking into eyes that smiled as with an old friendliness."]

He turned from her, presently, to speak to some one else, and Mary Alice caught sight then of a face she knew. For an instant, she stood staring. For an instant, he stood staring back, as unbelieving as she.

Then, "You seem to be on friendly terms with His Majesty," he said.

"Have you showed him how to play the game, too?"

"No," Mary Alice answered, "but I've told him the Secret."

As soon as they could, they escaped--those two--out on to the terrace where the stars were shining thickly overhead.

"On one of those--those times in New York when we talked together," he said, "you told me that when something very marvellous had happened to you and you couldn't believe you were awake, that it was really true, you asked your G.o.dmother to pinch you. It--er, wouldn't be at all proper for me to ask you to please pinch me. But if you know any perfectly proper equivalent, I wish you'd do it."

"I've pinched myself," she returned, "and it seems I am awake. So I judge you must be, too."

"Then how, please----?"

And she told him.

"And you don't know yet who I am?"

"No."

So he told her. "I warned you it was nothing interesting," he said; "it is just my work that people are interested in. I don't belong in there," indicating the great house, "any more than you do. They like me for a novelty, because I've dared and suffered; and because, as things turned out, I was in a position to do what they are pleased to call a great service to the Empire. I wish I liked them better--they want to be very kind to me, and I was born of them, so they like me the better for that. But I've been in the wilderness too much--I can't get used to these strange folk at home."

"I used to think I couldn't get used to strange folk," Mary Alice murmured, "but I seem to have got on fairly well for a girl from Nowhere."

"Was it the Secret?"

She nodded.

"When may I know?"

"I--I can't tell."

"You told the King."

"He seemed to need it so."

"Don't I need it?"

"I--I can't tell."

He seemed discouraged, and as if he did not know what next to say.

They strolled in silence over to where she had been standing the night before when the King spoke to her. From within the great house came the entrancingly sweet song of a world-famous soprano engaged to pour her liquid notes before the King.

Mary Alice stood very still, drinking it in. When it ceased, she stole a look up at the bronzed face beside her; the light from a window in her far wing of the house fell full on that rugged face, and it looked very stern but also very sad. Mary Alice's heart, which had been exultant only a short while ago, began suddenly--in one of those strange revulsions which all hearts know--to ache indefinably. This hour would probably be like those other brief hours in which he had shared her life. To-morrow, or next day, he would be gone; and forever and forever the memory of these moments on the terrace, with the stars overhead and that exquisite song in their ears, would be coming back to taunt her unbearably.

She made up her mind that before he went out of her life again, she would tell him the Secret; so that at least, wherever he went, however far from him the rest of her way through life might lie, they would always have that thought in common; and whenever it came to help him, as it must, he would think of her.

Timidly she laid a hand upon his arm. He had been far away, following the trail of long, long thoughts, and her touch recalled him sharply.

"What is it?" he asked.

"I--I want to tell you the Secret."

"I don't think I want to know," he answered, rather shortly.

"Why--why----" Mary Alice faltered. Her lips quivered and her eyes began to fill. "I--I must go in," she said.

He put out a hand to detain her, but either she did not see it in the dark, or else she eluded it; for in a moment she was gone, across the terrace towards the lighted French windows of the rooms of state.

How she managed to get through those next few minutes until she could find the d.u.c.h.ess and ask to be excused, Mary Alice never knew. All of her that was capable of feeling or caring about anything seemed to have left this part of her that wore the d.u.c.h.ess's lovely white gown and scarf of silver tissue, and to be out on the dark terrace under the pale star beams, with a tall young man who spoke bitterly. This girl in the sheen of white and silver to whom the King was speaking kindly, was some one unreal and ghostly who acted like a real live girl, but was not.