There is a certain instinct, as I have heard, which warns us when danger approaches those to whom we are closest. Yet if such warnings do in truth exist, I at least have never known their touch. I had no more prescience of my Emile's death than in our childhood days, when I had glimpsed, unknowing, the skiff in the bay on the day that Edmond was to drown. Nor had I foreknowledge of Jehan's peril at the false Edmond's hand or in the boarding of the Avalanche — and if, as some would have it, I am revealed thereby as bad mother and unfeeling bride, then so be it; I cannot, alas, pretend to a sensitivity it seems I lack.

And so it was that when Danilo set himself upon impulse alone to defend the rear, I knew no more of it than any newborn babe. Osman, I think, who had known the Count far longer than I, was prey to some such feeling of disquiet; though when I sought to tax him with it afterward, he turned my questions aside, with all courtesy but with a final air.

I would not open windows into men's souls, quoth Elizabeth of England; and though I have no especial love for the English or their prim-lipped Queen, it seems to me her ancestor was wiser in this matter than she knew. So I will set down now in this account simply that with Osman at our head, the advance-guard of the Avalanche party swept down through the fortress towards the gates at great speed, overcoming such resistance as interposed itself but pursuing no further those who fled, and that Osman at first seemed as merry as any of that crew, but grew silent as time wore on and betrayed at last some disquiet.

We had bid fair to outdistance the rearguard entirely in our haste, and at times he would call a halt until the first of those who followed could be seen. But the latest of these halts was longer than any had lasted before; and when the stragglers hastened into view, it was with a tale of events that drove the colour from every cheek present.

Danilo was trapped — and trapped together with a foe whose lack of pity I for one knew only too well. And the blade that should be rights have served for his defence had been given instead for mine.... It was in that moment that Osman's glance happened to cross my own. The same impulse in both was clear to read; but he had a score of lives besides entrusted to his care, where I had only one. Of Danilo's explicit order he did not then speak, nor would I have heeded if he had.

We shared but a single glance before the choice was made, but that was enough. What I intended was only what he would dearly loved to attempt himself, had he been free to follow where his wishes led. His eyes held mine a moment longer, dark with disquiet yet wishing me Godspeed; and then he was turning to give swift orders to his men, feigning not to see me as I slipped aside and fled.

I could guess well enough where Danilo must be and even how I might reach him, by that same upward route I had once seen from the window of my captor's room. Fear for myself alone had not been enough to drive me to attempt that climb. Anguish for the life of another now lent me wings.

I was in time, or so it seemed — but barely. I glimpsed Danilo, stretched ashen on the stones, move slightly, as if to ward off a final blow, and the sight woke in me a fury that carried me over the last lip of the ascent and to within a metre's space of Edmond before he knew himself no longer alone. With the blade bared in my hand, I could have killed him then, save that he would never have known whose hand had struck him down. It was the desire of my heart in that moment above all that he should know; that he should taste in some small measure the bitterness he gave so freely to others to drink.

Of honour I did not think. One does not concern oneself with honour when seeking how best to extinguish such vermin from life.

I bade him turn, in such biting terms as my father himself might have used if he thought me out of earshot, and saw with pleasure the unbelieving look upon his face. For a moment he merely stared at me, as if at a performing bear, until I made a thrust that was like to run him through, had he not darted back.

"Better to fight even a woman than an unarmed man, monsieur — or does your courage extend only to those who cannot fight back?" And I regret to say that I spat at his feet.

Whatever else he was — and as to that, none now will ever know — I will do Edmond the justice at least to say that he was no coward, nor even a bragging fool. When once he perceived me to be in earnest, he joined his blade unhesitatingly with mine, and pressed forward in combat with a force that reserved no false humility for my sex, but sought to bring the match to an end as quickly as might be.

But the force of my anger was at least the equal of his — there would be no question, for me, of killing in cold blood, not this time — and I was not, as the reader may recall, unprepared. Danilo's sword, supple and light, might almost have been a fencing foil, and made to suit a woman's hand.... It was not at all like fencing Emile; but not in the way I had imagined.

Emile had been a master of the blade, taller than I and swift on his feet, and it was rare indeed in the salle that I could do better than force him to a draw. He had praised my skill; but in my heart I had always set my talents against his measure, and judged them wanting. Now, for the first time, I found myself matched against an opponent who lacked both my reach and speed, powerful though he might be — who, it became apparent, lacked over me a vital edge. I had almost never been able to defeat Emile. For all his striving, Edmond managed to touch me with but one glancing thrust, a stinging slice along one arm, before I lodged my point through his guard and squarely against his body. And failed to pull the thrust.

The look in his eyes as the steel sank home was all the repayment I had desired.... No, cold blood didn't even come into it. It was not even hard, in the end, to drag the blade free as he sagged, and to ram it a second time through his throat.

I had thought to end my story there, with the death of Edmond; but Danilo, leaning now upon my shoulder to read what I have set down, on his part as on my own, assures me that no lady-novelist would leave her story hanging open thus, and that I must perforce append a conclusion to my account in proper form, recounting the fates of all who figured therein — or at least of those two of whose strange meeting and courtship this has been the tale....

I see now that I left off with Danilo hanging seemingly upon the cusp of life and death; though you will have gathered now that he lived indeed, and was able even to whisper a few words in answer to my pleas in that moment when I flung myself down at his side, heedless of the blood-streaked stone. Of what was said between us in that heartfelt hour I will not write, for that memory belongs to us two alone and is not lightly to be disclosed. Suffice it to say that the tenderest passages in the annals of the poets are not more close to my heart, nor more cherished in memory than those dear halting phrases murmured there between his lips and mine.... He is often in jest; on that day we spoke only truth, and trembled to know it possible so openly to confide.

Eh, mon cher amour, do not smile — you know full well I have not the skill to set down truly what I mean! Feel here, my heart beneath your hand — it beats for you, as yours, beneath that laughing cloak, for me. You could not deny it, even if you would.

Ah non, Danilo, laisse-moi.... Enough of embraces now, mon cher amour turbulent. I have still some pages left to write, and Jeannot there on the terrace is in search of you — for some wild scheme, I make no doubt. I know not sometimes which of you two is the greater child at heart.

So... and now what still remains for me to tell? We escaped, with the fortress defence thrown into disarray, and had boarded the Avalanche before Danilo's weakness overmastered him at last. He lay as one dead to the world for some three nights and days, while the surgeon gave what care he could, and the little Avalanche laboured back towards Saint-Pierre against an adverse wind. There was a time, when wound-fever had set in, that we feared he might lose altogether the use of his arm.

But before we sighted Martinique at last the fever broke, and a cheerful patient was making light of all the surgeon's past prophecies of doom, being much more concerned — or so it seemed to me — for the welfare of my own shallow scratch, where the sword-blade had glanced briefly along my arm. I had paid but little heed to the dressing of this wound, which had already all but dried to a dry and jagged mark; but Danilo must needs have the surgeon treat it with all his skill, so that for my sake there should be no hint of a scar. He would have been better employed, as I told him, in giving thanks that he bade fair to escape with no worse than scars on his part — but he retorted, with a ghost of his laugh, that he had rather give thanks that Paris fashions were never like to dictate that he appear in a puff-sleeved ballgown. The which, being both very true and a sign of returning light-heartedness, had us both in rather more merriment than it might seem to warrant.

We landed at St-Pierre, and called upon the physician there; but the patient was by that time so much better, having been subjected perforce without doctor's orders to a simple diet and sea air, and all the talk of the town was running so high at the tales of our return, that the great man readily allowed himself to be persuaded to prescribe a sojourn at Mireille for the convalescent months.... And so here then, at last, it seems my story is come to its end.

Danilo is well again, save only that he still sports a sling upon the injured arm — which, I may add, does not seem of late to discommode him in the least from taking me into his embrace, or teaching Jeannot to carve out wooden boats, or from anything that he wishes to do.... There is a month or more before he must needs leave before the hurricanes begin; but when he leaves, I will go with him as his wife.

We shall see Paris, and Vienna, and Strelsau, and little Bad Hortig on the Schelstein estate itself, where his widowed mother and Osman's family await. My home is here, at Mireille where I was born and where first I loved Emile, and here at last I will always return, with Jehan who is its heir. But Danilo's heart is in Ruritania still, in the distant land of his own birth, and for his sake I will learn to love it as my own and take his people for my kin, as he has taken mine.

I had not known that Jehan had stood in such need of a father — or my father Thierry in need of a son. I can see them now through the open window even as I write, coming along the terrace arm in arm, with the child running behind. The westering sun catches the grey in my father's hair and burnishes Danilo's in gold....

Alas, I am no better hand, it seems, at ending a story than at laying out its commencement in proper form. But such as it is, my tale is done; and the blank leaves that remain in this old journal-book of mine may serve as witness to the long golden days to come, in those pages of our lives that are yet to be written. From all my heart I wish to you such happiness as I have found — and ask you to wish me well. Adieu.