sleep again. He will see you later."

"He--Loris; he is safe, then?"

He nodded, but would say no more, and presently I drifted back into
sleep or unconsciousness.

CHAPTER XLVIII

THE GRAND DUCHESS PASSES

I've heard it said that sick or wounded people always die if they have
no wish to live, but that's not true. I wanted to die as badly as any
one ever did, but yet I lived. I suppose I must have a lot of
recuperative energy; anyhow, next time I woke up I felt pretty much as
usual, except for the dull throb of the wound across my forehead, which
some one had scientifically strapped up. My physical pain counted as
nothing compared with the agony of shame and grief I suffered in my
soul, as, bit by bit, I recollected all that had happened. I had failed
in my trust, failed utterly. I was left to guard her; I ought to have
forbidden--prevented--her going out into the street at all; and, when
the worst came, I ought to have died with her.

I tried to say something of this to Loris when I was face to face with
him once more, in the room where Anne and I had been working when that
ill-omened woman, Marie Levinska, interrupted us; but he stopped me with
an imperative gesture.

"Do not reproach yourself, my friend. All that one man could do, you
did. I know that well, and I thank you. One last service you shall do,
if you are fit for it. You shall ride with us to-night when we take her
away. Mishka has told you of the arrangements? That is well. If we get
through, you will not return here; that is why I have sent for you now."

"Not return?" I repeated.

"No," he answered quietly but decisively. "Once before I begged you to
leave us, now I command you to do so; not because I do not value you,
but because--she--would have wished it. Wait, hear me out! You have done
noble service in a cause that can mean nothing to you, except--"

"Except that it is a cause that the lady I served lived,--and died--for,
sir," I interrupted.

More than once before I had spoken of her to him as the woman we both
loved; but now the other words seemed fittest; for not half an hour back
I had learned the truth, that, I think, I had known all along,--that she
who lay in her coffin in the great drawing-room yonder was, if her
rights had been acknowledged, the Grand Duchess Loris of Russia. It was
Vassilitzi who told me.

"They were married months ago, in Paris,--before she went to England,"
he had said, and for a moment a bitter wa