"It is possible that your sufferings have become more intolerable,"
said the princess, coldly; "but you confided them to me fully and
frankly at that time. It was, indeed, the only time since our
marriage we had any thing to confide. Our only secret is that we do
not love and never can love each other; that only in the eyes of the
world are we married. There is no union of hearts."

"Oh, princess, your words are death!" And completely overcome, he
sank upon a chair.

Wilhelmina looked at him coldly, without one trace of emotion.

"Death?" said she, "why should I slay you? We murder only those whom
we love or hate. I neither love nor hate you."

"You are only, then, entirely indifferent to me," asked the prince.

"I think, your highness, this is what you asked of me, on our
wedding-day. I have endeavored to meet your wishes, and thereby, at
least, to prove to you that I had the virtue of obedience. Oh, I can
never forget that hour," cried the princess. "I came a stranger,
alone, ill from home-sickness and anguish of heart, to Berlin. I was
betrothed according to the fate of princesses. I was not consulted!
I did not know--I had never seen the man to whom I must swear
eternal love and faith. This was also your sad fate, my prince. We
had never met. We saw each other for the first time as we stood
before God's altar, and exchanged our vows to the sound of merry
wedding-bells, and the roar of cannon. I am always thinking that the
bells ring and the cannon thunders at royal marriages, to drown the