ron, he was driven out from them desolate and accursed.

Unlike Cain, he had suffered in his brother's stead, yet, like Cain,
he was branded and could only wander out into the darkness and the
wilderness.

She watched him many minutes, he unconscious of her gaze; and while she
did so, many conflicting emotions passed over the colorless delicacy
of her features; her eyes were filled and shadowed with many altering
thoughts; her heart was waking from its rest, and the high, generous,
unselfish nature in her strove with her pride of birth, her dignity of
habit.

"Wait," she said softly, with the old imperial command of her voice
subdued, though not wholly banished. "I think you have mistaken me
somewhat. You wrong me if you think that I could be so callous, so
indifferent, as to leave you here without heed as to your fate.
Believe in your innocence you know that I do, as firmly as though you
substantiated it with a thousand proofs; reverence your devotion to your
honor you are certain that I must, or all better things were dead in
me."

Her voice sank inaudible for the instant; she recovered her self-control
with an effort.

"You reject my friendship--you term it cruel--but at least it will be
faithful to you; too faithful for me to pass out of Africa and never
give you one thought again. I believe in you. Do you not know that that
is the highest trust, to my thinking, that one human life can show in
another's? You decide that it is your duty not to free yourself from
this bondage, not to expose the actual criminal, not to take up your
rights of birth. I dare not seek to alter that decision. But I cannot
leave you to such a future without infinite pain, and there must--there
shall be--means through which you will let me hear of you--through
which, at least, I can know that you are living."

She stretched her hands toward him with that same gesture with which she
had first declared her faith in his guiltlessness; the tears trembled
in her voice and swam in her eyes. As she had said, she suffered for him
exceedingly. He, hearing those words which breathed the only pity that
had ever humiliated him, and the loyal trust which was but the truer
because the sincerity of faith in lieu of the insanity of love dictated
it, made a blind, staggering, unconscious movement of passionate, dumb
agony. He seized her hands in his and held them close against his breast
one instant, against the loud, hard panting of his aching heart.