hand
sharply to her throat. Quite suddenly she knew that she was afraid of
this monster to whom she had given herself--horribly, unreasonably
afraid.

But he did not speak, and her scare began to subside.

"Now I'm going to wish," she said mounting the lowest bar of the gate.

He spoke then, abruptly, cynically.

"Really," he said, "what can you have to wish for now?"

She looked back at him defiantly. Her eyes were on a level with his.
Because he had frightened her, she went the more recklessly. It would
never answer to let him suspect this power of his.

"Something that I'm afraid you will never give me," she said, a bitter
ring in her voice.

"What?" he asked sharply.

"Among other things, happiness," she said. "You can never give me
that."

She saw him bite his lip, but he controlled himself to speak quietly.

"Surely you make a mistake," he said, "to wish for something which,
since you are my wife, can never be yours!"

She laughed, still standing on the gate, and telling herself that she
felt no fear.

"Very well," she said, "I will wish for a Deliverer first."

"For what?"

His naked fist banged down upon the gate-post, and she saw the blood
start instantly and begin to flow. She knew in that moment that she had
gone too far.

Her fear returned in an overwhelming flood. She stumbled off the gate
and faced him, white to the lips.

A terrible pause followed, in which she knew herself to be fighting him
with every inch of her strength. Then suddenly, without apparent reason,
she gave in.

"I was joking," she said, in a low voice. "I spoke in jest."

He made her a curt bow, his face inflexibly stern.

"It is good of you to explain," he said. "With my limited knowledge of
your character and motives, I am apt to make mistakes."

He turned from her abruptly with the words, and, shaking the blood from
his hand, bound the wound with his handkerchief.

"Shall we go on?" he said then.

And Nina accompanied him, ashamed and afraid. She felt as if at the last
moment she had asked for quarter; and, contemptuously, because she was a
woman, he had given it.

IV

A GREVIOUS WOUND

After that moment of madness by the wishing-gate Nina's wanton desire to
provoke to wrath the monster to whom she was chained died a sudden and
unnatural death. She was scrupulously careful of his feelings from that
day forward, and he treated her with a freezing courtesy, a cynical
consideration, that seemed t