it would avail her nothing that he hated
and feared Olfan, and only promoted this marriage in order to bribe the
king into standing his friend during the expected political convulsions.
Indeed, as she guessed rightly, Nam would much better like to know her
safely over the borders of the Mist-land than to be called upon to greet
her as its queen. This was obvious, seeing that should she return to
power, religious or temporal, it was scarcely to be hoped that she would
forget the wrongs which she had suffered at his hands. The marriage was
merely a temporary expedient designed to ward off immediate evil, but
should it come about and the crisis be tided over, it was plain that
the struggle between the false goddess and the perjured priest must be
carried on until it ended in the death of one or both of them. However,
all these things lay in the future as Nam foretold it, a future which
Juanna never meant to live to see.

There remained Leonard and Olfan. The former, of course, was powerless,
at least for the present, having suffered himself to be entrapped,
though his lack of caution mattered little, for doubtless if guile
had failed, force would have been employed. It was she who must save
Leonard, for he could do nothing to save her.

The more Juanna thought of the matter, the more she became convinced
that her only hope lay in Olfan himself, who had sworn friendship to
her, and who certainly was no traitor. She remembered that in their
conversation of the day before he had admitted that she could be nothing
to him while Leonard lived. Probably Nam had told her that the Deliverer
was dead, and then it was, actuated by his passion which she knew to
be genuine enough, that he had entered into a bargain with the priest.
These must be the terms of the compact, that the game of the false gods
being played, Olfan undertook to support Nam and the rest of his party
to the best of his power, for the consideration to be received of her
hand in marriage, stipulating, however, that she should give it of her
own free will.

This of course she would never do; therefore Olfan's proviso gave her
a loophole of escape, though Juanna was well aware that it would not
be wise to rely too implicitly on the generosity of the savage chief in
matters upon which savages are apt to be neither generous nor delicate.
On this she must fall back as a last resource, or rather as a last
resource but one. Meanwhile, she would fight Nam and Soa step by