This could not go on forever.All the world was talking about it.The Duke was beginning to look perplexed.Poor Conrad was becoming a very ghost through dread and dire distress.One day as he was emerging from a private ante-room attached to the picture gallery,Constance confronted him,and seizing both his hands,in hers,exclaimed:
"Oh,why,do you avoid me?What have I done--what have I said,to lose your kind opinion of me--for,surely I had it once?Conrad,do not despise me,but pity a tortured heart?I cannot--cannot hold the words unspoken longer,lest they kill me--I LOVE you,CONRAD!There,despise me if you must,but they would be uttered!"
Conrad was speechless.Constance hesitated a moment,and then,misinterpreting his silence,a wild gladness flamed in her eyes,and she flung her arms about his neck and said:
"You relent!you relent!You can love me--you will love me!Oh,say you will,my own,my worshipped Conrad!'"
"Conrad groaned aloud.A sickly pallor overspread his countenance,and he trembled like an aspen.Presently,in desperation,he thrust the poor girl from him,and cried:
You know not what you ask!It is forever and ever impossible!"And then he fled like a criminal and left the princess stupefied with amazement.
A minute afterward she was crying and sobbing there,and Conrad was crying and sobbing in his chamber.Both were in despair.Both save ruin staring them in the face.