Free Nicholas and Alexandra by Robert K. Massie Page B

He told her at this point about Kschessinska. Although she was only twenty-two, Alix rose to the occasion like a true granddaughter of Queen Victoria.
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    She forgave him handsomely, even gushingly, but she also delivered a brief little lecture which cast Nicholas in the role of the male redeemed by the purity of love:
    "What is past is past and will never return. We all are tempted in this world and when we are young we cannot always fight and hold our own against the temptation, but as long as we repent, God will forgive us. . . . Forgive my writing so much, but I want you to be quite sure of my love for you and that I love you even more since you told me that little story, your confidence in me touched me oh so deeply. . . . [May] I always show myself worthy of it. . . . God bless you, beloved Nicky. . . ."
    Knowing Nicholas's love of military pageantry, the Queen arranged a succession of displays. At Windsor he watched a thousand cadets from the naval academy at Greenwich perform gymnastics to music. He reviewed six companies of the Coldstream Guards, and the officers invited him to dinner. Normally, Nicholas would have jumped at this invitation, "But . . . Granny loves me so and doesn't like me missing dinner, nor does Alix," he wrote, explaining to his mother why he refused. At Aldershot, the huge British military camp, they watched a torchlight retreat ceremony and listened to a massed choir of English, Scottish, Welsh and Irish voices. Next day, Nicholas, dressed in his uniform of the Imperial Hussars, took the salute of columns of British infantry, cavalry and horse artillery. He liked especially the pleated kilts and the skirling pipes of the Highland regiments.
    While Nicholas was in England, a baby was born into the British royal family. "Yesterday, at to o'clock a son was born to Géorgie and May to the general joy," he wrote. The baby, named Prince Edward, would become King Edward VIII, and later the Duke of Windsor. Nicholas and Alix were chosen as godparents of the little Prince. "Instead of plunging the infant into the water," noted the Tsarevich, "the archbishop sprinkled water on his head. . . . What a nice, healthy child." Afterward the baby's father dropped in on the engaged couple at Windsor. Even in his diary Nicholas showed a quaint touch of prudery as he described the visit: "Géorgie came for lunch. Alix and he stayed in my room with me. I add these words 'with me' because otherwise it would sound a bit odd."
    Before he left England, the Tsarevich and his fiancée went with the Queen to Osborne, the seaside royal residence on the Isle of Wight. From the palace lawns they could watch flotillas of sailboats scudding before the wind. Like a small boy, Nicholas took off his shoes and walked through the waves rolling up on the sand.
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    As the end of July approached, the six-week idyll came to an end. Alix had filled the diary with messages: "Love is caught, I have bound his wings. No longer will he roam or fly away. Within our two hearts forever, love sings." As the Polar Star slipped past Dover, north-bound for the Baltic, Nicholas read her prayer, "Sleep gently, and let the gentle waves rock you to sleep. Your Guardian Angel is keeping watch over you. A tender kiss."
    Next day, Nicholas stood at the rail watching a fiery sunset off the coast of Jutland and gazing across the water as twenty ships of the Imperial German Navy dipped their flags in salute. Entering the Baltic through the Skaggerak, the Polar Star steamed slowly down the Danish coastline within sight of the ancient castle of Elsinore. But Nicholas's thoughts were far away.
    "I am yours," Alix had written, "you are mine, of that be sure. You are locked in my heart, the little key is lost and now you must stay there forever."
    There was another entry, too—a strangely prophetic line from Marie Corelli: "For the past is past and will never return, the future we know not, and only the present can be called our own."
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