lently, that they may
preserve at least a mask of dignity. Otherwise they incur pity--and pity
is very near contempt."

And then I lost my head.

"Not mine, not mine!" I cried, throwing out my arms; and though that
was all I said, there was such a ring in my choking voice that she rose
stiffly from her seat and stood tense and tall confronting me, almost
eye to eye, reproof in every line of her.

"Princess, forgive me!" I cried. "It breaks my heart in pieces to hear
you utter things that have been in my mind these many years, poisoning
the devotion that I owed to the late Prince, poisoning the very loyalty
I owe my King. You say I pity you. If that were so, none has the better
right."

"Who gave it you?" she asked me, breathless.

"Heaven itself, I think," I answered recklessly. "What you have
suffered, I have suffered for you. When I came to Court the infamy was
a thing accomplished--all of it. But I gathered it, and gathering it,
thanked Heaven I had been spared the pain and misery of witnessing it,
which must have been more than ever I could have endured. Yet when I
saw you, when I watched you--your wistful beauty, your incomparable
grace--there was a time when the thought to murder stirred darkly in my
mind that I might at least avenge you."

She fell away before me, white to the very lips, her eyes dilating as
they regarded me.

"In God's name, why?" she asked me in a strangled voice.

"Because I loved you," I replied, "always, always, since the day I saw
you. Unfortunately, that day was years too late, even had I dared to
hope--"

"Antonio!" Something in her voice drew my averted eyes. Her lips had
parted, her eyes kindled into life, a flush was stirring in her cheeks.

"And I never knew! I never knew!" she faltered piteously.

I stared.

"Dear Heaven, why did you withhold a knowledge that would have upheld
me and enheartened me through all that I have suffered? Once, long, long
agog I hoped--"

"You hoped!"

"I hoped, Antonio--long, long ago."

We were in each other's arms, she weeping on my shoulder as if her heart
would burst, I almost mad with mingling joy and pain--and as God lives
there was more matter here for pain than joy.

We sat long together after that, and talked it out. There was no help
for it. It was too late on every count. On her side there was the King,
most jealous of all men, whose chattel she was become; on mine, there
was my wife and children, and so deep and true was m