Temporal Power | Page 9

this calm
statuesque beauty which in every line and curve of loveliness silently
mutinied against him, and despised him. Puzzled, yet fascinated, he
sought in his mind for some clue to her meaning.
"There are women" she went on--"to whom love, or what is called love,
is necessary,--for whom marriage is the utmost good of existence. I am
not one of these. Had I my own choice I would live my life away from
all men,--I would let nothing of myself be theirs to claim,--I would give
all I am and all I have to God, who made me what I am. For truly and
honestly, without any affectation at all, I look upon marriage, not as an
honour, but a degradation!"
Had she been less in earnest, he might have smiled at this, but her
beauty, intensified as it was by the fervour of her feeling, seemed
transfigured into something quite supernatural which for the moment
dazzled him.
"Am I to understand--" he began.

She interrupted him by a swift gesture, while the rich colour swept over
her face in a warm wave.
"Understand nothing"--she said,--"but this--that I do not love you,
because I can love no man! For the rest I am your wife; and as your
wife I give myself to you and your nation wholly and in all things--
save love!"
He advanced and took her hands in his.
"This is a strange bargain!" he said, and gently kissed her.
She answered nothing,--only a faint shiver trembled through her as she
endured the caress. For a moment or two he surveyed her in silence,--it
was a singular and novel experience for him, as a future king, to be the
lawful possessor of a woman's beauty, and yet with all his sovereignty
to be unable to waken one thrill of tenderness in the frozen soul
imprisoned in such exquisite flesh and blood. He was inclined to
disbelieve her assertions,--surely he thought, there must be emotion,
feeling, passion in this fair creature, who, though she seemed a goddess
newly descended from inaccessible heights of heaven was still only a
woman? And upon the whole he was not ill- pleased with the curious
revelation she had made of herself. He preferred the coldness of women
to their volcanic eruptions, and would take more pains to melt the snow
of reserve than to add fuel to the flame of ardour.
"You have been very frank with me," he said at last, after a pause, as he
loosened her hands and moved a little apart from her--"And whether
your physical and mental hatred of my sex is a defect in your nature, or
an exceptional virtue, I shall not quarrel with it. I am myself not
without faults; and the chiefest of these is one most common to all men.
I desire what I may not have, and covet what I do not possess. So! We
understand each other!"
She raised her eyes--those beautiful deep eyes with the moonlight
glamour in them,--and for an instant the shining Soul of her, pure and
fearless, seemed to spring up and challenge to spiritual combat him
who was now her body's master. Then, bending her head with a

graceful yet proud submission, she retired.
From that time forth she never again spoke on this, or any other subject
of an intimate or personal nature, with her Royal spouse. Cold as an
iceberg, pure as a diamond, she accepted both wifehood and
motherhood as martyrdom, with an evident contempt for its humiliation,
and without one touch of love for either husband or children. She bore
three sons, of whom the eldest, and heir to the throne was, at the time
this history begins, just twenty. The passing of the years had left
scarcely a trace upon her beauty, save to increase it from the sparkling
luminance of a star to the glory of a full-orbed moon of loveliness,--and
she had easily won a triumph over all the other women around her, in
the power she possessed to command and retain the admiration of men.
She was one of those brilliant creatures who, like the Egyptian
Cleopatra, never grow old,--for she was utterly exempt from the
wasting of the nerves through emotion. Her eyes were always bright
and clear; her skin dazzling in its whiteness, save where the equably
flowing blood flushed it with tenderest rose,--her figure remained
svelte, lithe and graceful in all its outlines. Finely strung, yet strong as
steel in her temperament, all thoughts, feelings and events seemed to
sweep over her without affecting or disturbing her mind's calm
equipoise. She lived her life with extreme simplicity, regularity, and
directness, thus driving to despair all would-be scandal-mongers; and
though many gifted and famous men fell madly in love with their great
princess, and often, in