"Hard words will not solve my dilemma, my friend. I wish they would!" and she sighed heavily. "It is my turn to-day, to-morrow it will be Chalice’s, and then my father’s. I see only the one way out; but then there is this Jewess."
I sat thinking hard. "If there were a way out you would take it?"
Her face lighted eagerly for a second, and then fell again. "Of course; but there is none."
"I am not so sure of that. Will you let me try to find one?"
She thrust out her hand impulsively. "With all my heart," she said fervently.
Our eyes met as our hands were clasped. "Don’t give up yet," I said as I rose. "We are a long way from being beaten yet. But you must let me take my own course, and promise to do nothing without first telling me."
"Why, of course. I promise that freely. But the power behind him is very strong."
My sister came in then, with a very official-looking letter for me.
"A very fussy individual gave me this for you, Paul, as I was coming in, and said it was urgent."
I opened it, and found it was a curt summons to an interview on the following morning with von Felsen’s father. As I slipped it into my pocket I saw Althea’s eyes fixed on me questioningly.
I told her what it was, and added with a smile: "I think it should be the first step to the way out."
"I have found the very place for us to go to, Althea," broke in Bessie.
"You may not have to go at all, Bess, and certainly not yet," I told her.
"Fräulein Althea will explain everything," and with that I went off to think over the whole tangle.
As soon as I reached my room I sat down to look the difficulties of the problem before me fairly in the face. And formidable enough they were.
The interview with Althea had shifted the axis of everything. What I had deemed the mere comedy of the Imperial marriage--a matter which a few words of explanation would set right instantly--had developed into a grave drama in which Althea’s future was imperilled. And with that was intertwined my own happiness.
Her confidence in telling me everything so frankly, no less than the hundred little touches with which it had all been told, had at once raised my own hopes of being able to win her if only I could clear away the tangle, and at the same time had convinced me of her belief that the forces arrayed against us were too formidable to be overcome.