She staggered to her feet and was in his arms before the breath of her exclamation had died away. Had he not supported her she would have dropped to the floor. Her hands, her face were like ice, her breast was pulseless and there was the wildest terror in her eyes.
"My darling--my queen!" he cried, passionately. "At last I am with you! Don't look at me like that! It is really I--I could not stay away--I could not permit this sacrifice of yours. Speak to me Do not stare like that!"
Her wide blue eyes slowly swept his face, piteous wonder and doubt struggling in their depths.
"Am I awake?" she murmured, touching his face with her bewildered, questioning hands. "Is it truly you?" A smile illumined her face, but her joy was short-lived. An expression of terror came to her eyes and there was agony in the fingers that clasped his arm. "Why do you come here?" she cried. "It is madness! How and why came you to this room?"
He laughed like a delighted boy and hastily narrated the events of the past twenty-four hours, ending with the trick that gave him entrance to her room.
"And all this to see me?" she whispered.
"To see you and to save you. I hear that Gabriel has been annoying you and that you are to give up half of the kingdom to-morrow. Tell me everything. It is another reason for my coming."
Sitting beside him on the divan, she told of Gabriel's visit and his dismissal, the outlook for the next day, and then sought to convince him of the happiness it afforded her to protect him from an undeserved death. He obtained for Quinnox the royal pardon and lauded him to the skies. So ravishing were the moments, so ecstatic the sensations that possessed them that neither thought of the consequences if he were to be discovered in her room, disguised as one of her guardsmen. He forgot the real import of his reckless visit until she commanded him to stand erect before her that she might see what manner of soldier he was. With a laugh, he leaped to his feet and stood before her--attention! She leaned back among the cushions and surveyed him through the glowing, impassioned eyes which slowly closed as if to shut out temptation.
"You are a perfect soldier," she said, her lashes parting ever so slightly.
"No more perfect than you," he cried. She remembered, with confusion, her own masquerading, but it was unkind of him to remember it. Her allusion to his uniform turned his thoughts into the channel through which they had been surging so turbulently up to the moment that found him tapping at her door.