dication of
them were for Rosamund's condition rather than his own.

"O God, that you should be subjected to this!" he cried. "That you
should have suffered what you have suffered! The humiliation of it, the
barbarous cruelty! Oh!" He covered his haggard face with his hands.

She touched him gently on the arm.

"What I have suffered is but a little thing," she said, and her
voice was wonderfully steady and soothing. Have I not said that these
Godolphins were brave folk? Even their women were held to have something
of the male spirit in their breasts; and to this none can doubt that
Rosamund now bore witness. "Do not pity me, Lionel, for my sufferings
are at an end or very nearly." She smiled strangely, the smile of
exaltation that you may see upon the martyr's face in the hour of doom.

"How?" quoth he, in faint surprise.

"How?" she echoed. "Is there not always a way to thrust aside life's
burden when it grows too heavy--heavier than God would have us bear?"

His only answer was a groan. Indeed, he had done little but groan in all
the hours they had spent together since they were brought ashore from
the carack; and had the season permitted her so much reflection, she
might have considered that she had found him singularly wanting during
those hours of stress when a man of worth would have made some effort,
however desperate, to enhearten her rather than repine upon his own
plight.

Slaves entered bearing four enormous flaming torches which they set in
iron sconces protruding from the wall of the house. Thence they shed
a lurid ruddy glow upon the terrace. The slaves departed again, and
presently, in the black gap of the doorway between the Nubians, a third
figure appeared unheralded. It was Sakr-el-Bahr.

He stood a moment at gaze, his attitude haughty, his face
expressionless; then slowly he advanced. He was dressed in a short white
caftan that descended to his knees, and was caught about his waist in
a shimmering girdle of gold that quivered like fire in the glow of the
torches as he moved. His arms from the elbow and his legs from the knee
were bare, and his feet were shod with gold-embroidered red Turkish
slippers. He wore a white turban decked by a plume of osprey attached by
a jewelled clasp.

He signed to the Nubians and they vanished silently, leaving him alone
with his captives.

He bowed to Rosamund. "This, mistress," he said, "is to be your domain
henceforth which is to treat you more as wife tha