was in the plot
also, that when you had served their purpose you should die by secret
means, as one who knew too much."

"It is a lie," said Nam.

"Silence!" answered Juanna. "Let that door be opened, and you shall see
if I have lied."

"Wait awhile, Queen," said Olfan, who appeared utterly overcome. "If I
understand you right, your husband lives, and therefore you say that
the words which we have spoken and the oaths that we have sworn mean
nothing, for you are not my wife."

"That is so, Olfan."

"Then now I am minded to turn wicked and let him die," said the king
slowly, "for know this, Lady, I cannot give you up."

Juanna grew pale as death, understanding that this man's passions, now
that once he had given them way, had passed beyond his control.

"I cannot give you up," he repeated. "Have I not dealt well with you?
Did I not say to you, 'Consent or refuse, as it shall please you, but
having once consented you must not go back upon your words'? What have
I to do with the reasons that prompted them? My heart heard them and
believed them. Queen, you are wed to me; those oaths that you have sworn
may not be broken. It is too late; now you are mine, nor can I suffer
you to pass from me back to another man, even though he was your husband
before me."

"But the Deliverer! must I then become my husband's murderer?"

"Nay, I will protect him, and, if it may be, find means to send him from
the land."

Juanna stood silent and despairing, and at this moment Soa, lying on the
couch, broke into a shrill and mocking laugh that stung her like a whip
and roused her from her lethargy.

"King," she said, "I am at your mercy, not through any wanton folly of
my own, but because fate has made a sport of me. King, you have been
hardly used, and, as you say, hitherto you have dealt well with me. Now
I pray you let the end be as the beginning was, so that I may always
think of you as the noblest among men, except one who died this day to
save me. King, you say you love me; tell me then if my life hung upon a
word of yours, would that word remain unspoken?

"Such was my case: I spoke the word and for one short hour I betrayed
you. Will you, whose heart is great, bind me by such an oath as this, an
oath wrung from me to save my darling from the power of those dogs? If
this is so, then I have erred strangely in my reading of your mind, for
till now I have held you to be a man who would perish ere he fell so low
as to force a