d die!"

"Yes, far better! But the girl loves him. She is an ardent Spanish
creature--warm-hearted and simple as a child,--she believes"--and
Morgana's eyes had a pathetic wistfulness--"she believes,--as all women
believe when they love for the first time,--that love has a divine
power next to that of God!--that it will work miracles of recovery when
all seems lost. The disillusion comes, of course, sooner or later,--but
it has to come of itself--not through any other influence. She--Manella
Soriso--has resolved to be his wife."

"Gran' Dio!" Rivardi started back in utter amazement--"His wife?--That
girl? Young, beautiful? She will chain herself to a madman? Surely you
will not allow it!"

Morgana looked at him with a smile.

"Poor Giulio!" she said, softly--"You are a most unfortunate descendant
of your Roman ancestors as far as we women are concerned! You fall in
love with me--and you find I am not for you!--then you see a perfectly
lovely woman whom you cannot choose but admire--and a little stray
thought comes flying into your head--yes!--quite involuntarily!--that
perhaps--only perhaps--her love might come your way! Do not be angry,
my friend!--it was only a thought that moved you when you saw her the
other day--when I called you to look at her as she recovered
consciousness and lay on her bed like a sleeping figure of the
loveliest of pagan goddesses! What man could have seen her thus without
a thrill of tenderness!--and now you have to hear that all that beauty
and warmth of youthful life is to be sacrificed to a stone idol!--(for
the man she worships is little more!) ah, yes!--I am sorry for you,
Giulio!--but can do nothing to prevent the sacrifice,--indeed, I have
promised to assist it!"

Rivardi had alternately flushed and paled while she spoke,--her keen,
incisive probing of his most secret fancies puzzled and vexed him,--but
with a well-assumed indifference he waved aside her delicately pointed
suggestions as though he had scarcely heard them, and said--

"You have promised to assist? Can you reconcile it to your conscience
to let this girl make herself a prisoner for life?"

"I can!" she answered quietly--"For if she is opposed in her desire for
such imprisonment she will kill herself. So it is wisest to let her
have her way. The man she loves so desperately may die at any moment,
and then she will be free. But meanwhile she will have the consolation
of doing all she can for him, and the hope of hel