I beg you to believe it." Count Otto barely heard the words.

He was absorbed in the fanciful dreams born of many long solitary evenings, and like most timid and uncommunicative men he made his confidence in a momentary enthusiasm to a stranger.
"Koenigsmarck spoke for an hour, mentioning no names, so that I who from my youth have lived apart could not make a guess.

He spoke with a deal of passion; it seemed that one hour his life was paradise and the next a hell.

Even as he spoke he was one instant all faith and the next all despair.

One moment he was filled with his unworthiness and wonder that so noble a creature as a woman should bend her heart and lips from her heaven down to his earth.