e and become great and happy; and thus alone can I
continue to feast my eyes upon you, though it be from far."

She ceased, trembling with the strength of the passions that shook her,
to which indeed her words had given but feeble expression.

"Go," said Juanna, "I would have time to think."

Then Nam spoke again.

"We go, Shepherdess, in obedience to your wish, but before evening we
shall return to hear your answer. Do not attempt to work mischief upon
yourself, for know that you will be watched though you cannot see the
eyes that watch you. If you do but so much as lift a hand against your
life, or even strive to cut off the light that flows through yonder
hole, then at once you will be seized and bound, and my daughter will be
set to guard you. Shepherdess, farewell."

And they went, leaving Juanna alone and a prey to such thoughts as can
scarcely be written.

For several hours she sat there upon the couch, allowing no hint of what
she felt to appear upon her face, for she was too proud to suffer the
eyes which she knew were spying on her, though whence she could not
tell, to read her secret anguish.

As she sat thus in her desolation several things grew clear to Juanna,
and the first of them was that Soa must be mad. The love and hate that
seethed in her fierce heart had tainted her brain, making her more
relentless than a leopard robbed of its young. From the beginning she
had detested Leonard and been jealous of him, and incautiously enough he
had always shown his dislike and distrust of her. By slow degrees these
feelings had hardened into insanity, and to gratify the vile promptings
of her disordered mind she would hesitate at nothing.

From Soa, therefore, she could hope for no relenting. Nor had she
better prospect with Nam, for it was evident that in his case political
considerations operated as strongly as did those of a personal character
with his daughter. He was so much involved, he had committed himself so
deeply in this matter of the false gods, that, rightly or wrongly, he
conceived Soa's plan to offer the only feasible chance of escape from
the religious complications by which he was surrounded, that threatened
to bring his life and power to a simultaneous end.

It was out of the question, therefore, to expect help from the
high-priest, who was in the position of a man on a runaway horse with
precipices on either side of him, unless, indeed, she could show him
some safer path. Failing this,