e has grown very pale.

"It is no jest with me," he says, under his breath. "I would give you my
life if you would take it?"

The last words have the accent of an interrogation, of an appeal.

"That is to say a great deal," replies Xenia Sabaroff: she is startled,
astonished, troubled; she was not expecting any such entire avowal.

"Many men must have said as much to you who have more to recommend them
than I. Say something to me: what will you say?"

She does not immediately reply; she looks on the ground, and absently
traces patterns on the path with the end of her long walking-stick.

"Do you know," she says, at last, after a silence which seems to him
endless, "do you know that there are people who believe that I have been
the _delaissee_ of Lord Gervase? They do not phrase it so roughly, but
that is what they say."

Brandolin's very lips are white, but his voice does not falter for one
moment as he answers, "They will not say it in my hearing."

"And, knowing that they say it, you would still offer me your name?"

"I do so."

"And you would ask me nothing save what I choose to tell you?"

The sunny air seems to turn round with him for an instant: his brain
grows dizzy; his heart contracts with a sickening pain; but in the next
moment a great wave of strong and perfect faith in the woman he cares
for lifts his soul up on it, as a sea-wave lifts a drowning man to land.

"You shall tell me nothing save what you choose," he says, clearly and
very tenderly. "I have perfect faith in you. Had I less than that, I
would not ask you to be my wife."

She looks at him with astonishment and with wondering admiration.

"Yet you know so little of me!" she murmurs, in amaze.

"I love you," says Brandolin; then he kisses her hand with great
reverence.

The tears which she had thought driven from her eyes forever, rise in
them now.

"You are very noble," she replies, and leaves her hand for an instant
within his.

The Babe, who has been watching from behind a tuft of laurel, can
control his impatience no longer, but comes out of his ambush and runs
towards them, regardless of how undesired he may be.

"Dodo says that women never marry anybody they love," he says,
breathlessly; "but that is not true, is it, and you will let me carry
your train?"

"Hush, my dear," says Xenia Sabaroff, laying her hand on the child's
shoulder, while there is a sound in her voice which subdues to silence
even the audacious spirit