was, and light of heart and feet, beyond the reach of any man's
inventiveness. No, Jurgen had not invented her; and it strangely
contented him to know as much.

"Tell me your story, sir," says she, "for I love all romances."

"Ah, my dear child, but I cannot tell you very well of just what
happened. As I look back, there is a blinding glory of green woods
and lawns and moonlit nights and dance music and unreasonable
laughter. I remember her hair and eyes, and the curving and the feel
of her red mouth, and once when I was bolder than ordinary--But that
is hardly worth raking up at this late day. Well, I see these things
in memory as plainly as I now seem to see your face: but I can
recollect hardly anything she said. Perhaps, now I think of it, she
was not very intelligent, and said nothing worth remembering. But
the boy loved her, and was happy, because her lips and heart were
his, and he, as the saying is, had plucked a diamond from the
world's ring. True, she was a count's daughter and the sister of a
count: but in those days the boy quite firmly intended to become a
duke or an emperor or something of that sort, so the transient
discrepancy did not worry them."

"I know. Why, Jurgen is going to be a duke, too," says she, very
proudly, "though he did think, a great while ago, before he knew me,
of being a cardinal, on account of the robes. But cardinals are not
allowed to marry, you see--And I am forgetting your story, too! What
happened then?"

"They parted in September--with what vows it hardly matters now--and
the boy went into Gatinais, to win his spurs under the old Vidame de