"Your Highness knows very well that I am not free to marry," said Angelescu in a low voice, a dark flush spreading over his face. The Prince knew well, as did everyone else, that his aide was bound, and had been for years, to a married woman of high rank, whose unhappy married life had been responsible for the forming of the liaison, and that now time and custom and a quixotic sense of moral obligation continued to bind the unfortunate Angelescu to the lady's chariot wheels, though any feeling he had had for her was long since dead.
Ragna's entrance put a stop to further explanations, and Angelescu excused himself, saying that he must attend to the neglected writing of the afternoon. So the other two were left with the deck to themselves.
It was a perfect evening, the full moon hung low in an almost cloudless sky and the broad silver pathway over the water looked like a carpet laid for a procession of fairies. Ragna hung over the rail in an ecstasy of appreciative joy.
"Oh, isn't it just like Heaven!" she murmured.
"I can't say," answered Mirko, "never having been there, but it would make a good setting for a love scene. Imagine it for a honeymoon!"
"I must answer like Your Highness," laughed Ragna, "never having had a honeymoon I can't very well imagine one."
"I see only the hare, with his two long ears."
"Look again, the lady is on the right, and you see her head in profile, her lover has a beard--there, do you see?"
"That is because your eyes have not been opened; when you have had a lover, you will see the Lovers in the moon."
"Why should having a lover improve one's eyesight?" she asked.
"It will not improve your physical eyes, Mademoiselle, but it will open your spiritual eyes to the world; just now your heart is blind."
To this Ragna found no answer; she stood silent, her face turned up to the moon, still looking vainly for the Lovers. Mirko stood gazing at her tempted by her fairness, her simplicity, and the moonlight.
"Do you realize the delightfulness of this episode?" he asked her abruptly. "It will be like an oasis in the desert to look back on. I should like you to forget this evening, that we are anything but just our two selves; there is no Prince, there is no Fröken Andersen, we are just you and I and nothing more. Yesterday we met, to-morrow we part, probably for ever, so that there can be no thought of past or future to embarrass us. There is no yesterday and no to-morrow, no time and no limitation of space; we are all the world, we are quite alone and detached from everything, you and I and the moon!"