ged. "You will have a difficulty in perceiving the object I
might serve by falsehood."

She sat down suddenly upon the divan; it was almost as if she collapsed
bereft of strength; and as suddenly she fell to weeping softly.

"And... and I believed that you... that you...."

"Just so," he grimly interrupted. "You always did believe the best of
me."

And on that he turned and went out abruptly.

CHAPTER XXI. MORITURUS

He departed from her presence with bitterness in his heart, leaving a
profound contrition in her own. The sense of this her last injustice to
him so overwhelmed her that it became the gauge by which she measured
that other earlier wrong he had suffered at her hands. Perhaps her
overwrought mind falsified the perspective, exaggerating it until it
seemed to her that all the suffering and evil with which this chronicle
has been concerned were the direct fruits of her own sin of unfaith.

Since all sincere contrition must of necessity bring forth an ardent
desire to atone, so was it now with her. Had he but refrained from
departing so abruptly he might have had her on her knees to him
suing for pardon for all the wrongs which her thoughts had done him,
proclaiming her own utter unworthiness and baseness. But since his
righteous resentment had driven him from her presence she could but sit
and brood upon it all, considering the words in which to frame her plea
for forgiveness when next he should return.

But the hours sped, and there was no sign of him. And then, almost
with a shock of dread came the thought that ere long perhaps Sir John
Killigrew's ship would be upon them. In her distraught state of mind she
had scarcely pondered that contingency. Now that it occurred to her
all her concern was for the result of it to Sir Oliver. Would there
be fighting, and would he perhaps perish in that conflict at the hands
either of the English or of the corsairs whom for her sake he had
betrayed, perhaps without ever hearing her confession of penitence,
without speaking those words of forgiveness of which her soul stood in
such thirsty need?

It would be towards midnight when unable longer to bear the suspense of
it, she rose and softly made her way to the entrance. Very quietly she
lifted the curtain, and in the act of stepping forth almost stumbled
over a body that lay across the threshold. She drew back with a startled
gasp; then stooped to look, and by the faint rays of the lanterns on
mainmast and