The Game and the Candle Part 25

"If Feodor is not happy, he pays the penalty of having ruled," he returned, his strange unyouthful bitterness most repellant. "I am not happy, nor was my father, nor his father before him. And you would leave me to go with him, _cousine_? Think of it again. I offer you your household in the capital; until some day I marry, you will be still the first lady of my court. I loved you the first time I met you in Italy; you were so gentle, so different from all I knew. I was only a boy, Iria, but I resolved to bring you to my country some way; and I succeeded. What has Feodor to give compared with all I hold for you?

Will you stay?"

"But I am his wife," she answered simply. "How could I stay, sire?"

"You love him so?"

Iria grew pale, then raised her hands to her cheeks to cover the returning color that dyed even her temples.

"I--I do not know," she faltered, aghast at a question never asked even of herself. "I--no--he does not me--"

He stared at her, for once thoroughly amazed.

"He does not love you?" he echoed. "You do not know? Why, Iria--"

She flashed into the first and last anger he ever saw in her.

"You forced us to marry each other, sire. We did not want it, no!" she cried, and raised the little, useless handkerchief to her eyes.

There was a pause, then Adrian dismissed the subject with a sentence that gave his companion food for thought during many a day to come.

"Poor Feodor," he said very compa.s.sionately. "Twice."

At the other end of the library Allard hesitated, broke the thread of his gay speech, and caught it up again incoherently.

"What is it?" queried the Countess Marya playfully.

"Monsieur Allard looks at the agitation of madame," murmured the pet.i.te Baroness Alexia.

All three regarded the pair opposite, and exchanged significant glances.

"Lieutenant Vasili told me that Baron Dalmorov spent two hours with the Emperor last night. Is it so, monsieur?" added Alexia.

"Yes, Baroness," admitted Allard soberly.

She shrugged her shoulders.

"I am to be married in September, myself. But I do care for the Grand d.u.c.h.ess; I am sorry for--this."

"I love the Grand d.u.c.h.ess," said Marya quickly. "And the Regent has been most good to me. Where they go, there go I."

Allard winced even in the approving smile he sent the pale young maid of honor, so hard it was to hear Stanief's fall predicted and discussed.

Iria recovered herself almost immediately and brought her gold-and-topaz eyes back to those of the Emperor.

"I would like to go, if I may, sire," she said.

"Are you offended with me, _cousine_?"

"Certainly not, sire."

He watched her fold the gleaming embroidery, tapping his fingers restlessly on the arm of his chair.

"You would go, and Allard," he mused aloud, "each after a duty, a love, an aim. I wonder if there was ever but one who centered all such thoughts in me, who made me the axis of his world?"

"You think of Baron Dalmorov, sire?" she ventured.

He gave her the desired permission by rising.

"You are anxious to go, _cousine_; pardon. Why, yes, Dalmorov; who else?

Allard," he turned to summon the others, "Allard will have the honor of accompanying you to the carriage."

"No," protested Iria, but too late.

"No? You do not wish Allard's escort?" he demanded.

"Oh, yes, I--of course." She turned hurriedly from him, then looked back with a gesture of helpless bewilderment and distress. "I wish you had not spoken, sire; I wish you had not spoken."

And as the others came up, she pa.s.sed her hand through Marya's arm and left Allard and Alexia to follow.

All that day Stanief was immersed in councils and affairs. Not until evening did he and Iria meet, when she stopped in his study on her way to the opera, where no less a cavalier than the Emperor was to take her husband's place with her.

Standing straight and slim before him, her head drooping under its weight of silken floss and spanning jewels, her soft throat and dimpled shoulders crossed and recrossed by the manifold strands of the wonderful Stanief pink pearls, she repeated the conversation of the morning.

Repeated it, all except the last part. Her eyes downcast, her gloved fingers twisted nervously together, the rosy gems gleaming uneasily with her rapid breathing, it was the Iria of long ago he saw the timid, shrinking girl whom Allard had brought from Spain.

Sensitive as a woman to the change, Stanief gazed and listened, finding no explanation in the story she related.

"That is all?" he asked gently, when she ended.

"Yes," she said faintly. "All that matters, monseigneur."

"You," he hesitated a moment for the right words. "You are not troubled, or displeased, Iria?"

She retreated a step, bending to gather round her the trailing satin and lace folds.

"No," she answered. "No, monseigneur. Good night."

Without his will, without his act, the delicate confidence between them was shattered. The frail, exquisite understanding that was too slight for friendship, too pale for love, had been destroyed. Afterward, in the days which followed, Stanief came to look back on that month as the time when two existences crumbled under his touch.

When she had gone, he sat still for many moments.

"Adrian or Dalmorov," he decided. "I wonder--"

He touched the bell, the old dangerous drowsiness settling over his expression.

"Dimitri, you remember that I once placed in your charge a man found in this room?"

"Certainly, your Royal Highness."