An evil star brought me into his
household as his guest. For nearly a year I was kept vibrating
between the points of danger to us, my personal headquarters being
at the Chateau of Jitomir. And there I lived out my brief heart-life,
for there I met Valerie Troubetskoi. No one seemed to know where
Pierre had found her, but later I learned her story from her own
lips.
"That is, all of the story of a woman's heart-life which is ever
unveiled to any man! She was beautiful beyond--compare, her wistful
tenderness shining out as the moon, softer than the fierce noonday
glare of the passion-transfigured faces of our Polish beauties. For
they loved, for Love's own sake, and Valerie Troubetskoi offered
up the chalice of her own heart in silent sadness. I never saw so
lovely a being."
"Did she look like that?" suddenly demanded Hawke, thrusting a
photograph before the haggard eyes of the broken artist. He gasped,
and tears gathered in his lashes. "Valerie, herself, and, as I knew
her only before her fatal illness had marked her down. Did Alixe
give you this?" He clutched at it with his trembling hands.
"Go on," harshly said Alan Hawke, "the hour is late!"
The Pole buried his face in his thinned hands, and then brokenly
resumed: "The old story--the only one you know. She was about my
own age; Troubetskoi was nearly always away; perhaps he thought
to trap all my traitorous circle through me, or else he was in the
secret service of the hungry Russian eagle.
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