For IrÍa to attempt to hide a change of thought from the keen-eyed and sophisticated Adrian with his clairvoyant faculty of penetration was as futile as for a flower to resolve to shut from the sun the drop of dew in its golden heart. A week after her morning drive with Stanief, when IrÍa was passing one of her usual hours with the Emperor, he coolly put his finger on her secret.

"You are not yourself, cousine," he observed. "What has Feodor been telling you of me?"

"Oh!" IrÍa exclaimed in distress, regarding her youthful sovereign with wide, astonished eyes.

Adrian smiled with his fine malice.

"Come, confess. Or shall I guess? I am ungrateful, unappreciative, and swayed by Dalmorov; not so? Moreover I am dangerous, and making my Regent extremely uncomfortable."

"Oh, no, sire. He bade me never blame you, indeed. He said nothing like that," denied madame impetuously, then stopped short.

"Then what did he tell you?"

"But I was not to repeat," she pleaded.

This time Adrian laughed outright and leaned forward to capture one of the lily-leaf hands and lift it to his lips. They were seated in the great octagonal library, which of all the palace was the Emperor's favorite room, IrÍa employed with a bit of the intricate embroidery always brought at his especial request. He was fond of watching her while her attention was fixed on the pretty task; and until a few months before Stanief had not infrequently made a third at the gracious pretense of domesticity. To-day, at the opposite side of the apartment and out of hearing, Allard chatted with two of IrÍa's ladies.

"You have not repeated, cousine," the inquisitor assured her. "I myself guessed. And since I appear to have guessed worse than the truth, you had better correct me. I will not tell Feodor."

She looked up at him then, flushing all over.

"If I tell you, sire," she retorted with pride, "I shall say so to monseigneur as soon as I see him. Must I speak?"

"I think you had better, chÈre cousine."

She laid the glowing tissue in her lap and met the raillery of his glance quite seriously.

"Then I will try to remember, sire, because the truth is always much the best to know. And I am certain you would not ask me to hurt him. He asked me if I would be ready to go with him when the regency ended and you sent him from court. He said that you had never trusted him, and could not forgive him for the government forced upon him. That was all, indeed. Except that he did say you thought highly of Baron Dalmorov; and, and, a few words just for me."

Adrian passed his hand across his eyes as if to push back the hair from his forehead, and remained silent for a few seconds.

"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, IrÍa, 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?"

IrÍa 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, IrÍa—"

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 compassionately. "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 petite 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 Duchess; I am sorry for—this."

"I love the Grand Duchess," 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.

IrÍa 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 IrÍa, 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 passed 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 IrÍa 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 IrÍa 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, IrÍa?"

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."

"Have him brought to me; I am ready to see him."

Dimitri saluted and vanished. All unconsciously, IrÍa's taper, snowy fingers had touched the pieces on the grim chess-board, and moved them ever so slightly.