ready.
If I go back to Algiers they will assuredly hang me. Asad will see to
it, and not all my sea-hawks could save me from my fate."

She sank down again upon the divan, and sat there rocking her arms in a
gesture of hopeless distress.

"I see," she said. "I see. I am bringing this fate upon you. When you
sent Lionel upon that errand you voluntarily offered up your life to
restore me to my own people. You had no right to do this without first
consulting me. You had no right to suppose I would be a party to such a
thing. I will not accept the sacrifice. I will not, Sir Oliver."

"Indeed, you have no choice, thank God!" he answered her. "But you are
astray in your conclusions. It is I alone who have brought this fate
upon myself. It is the very proper fruit of my insensate deed. It
recoils upon me as all evil must upon him that does it." He shrugged his
shoulders as if to dismiss the matter. Then in a changed voice, a voice
singularly timid, soft, and gentle, "it were perhaps too much to ask,"
said he, "that you should forgive me all the suffering I have brought
you?"

"I think," she answered him, "that it is for me to beg forgiveness of
you."

"Of me?"

"For my unfaith, which has been the source of all. For my readiness to
believe evil of you five years ago, for having burnt unread your letter
and the proof of your innocence that accompanied it."

He smiled upon her very kindly. "I think you said your instinct guided
you. Even though I had not done the thing imputed to me, your instinct
knew me for evil; and your instinct was right, for evil I am--I must be.
These are your own words. But do not think that I mock you with them. I
have come to recognize their truth."

She stretched out her hands to him. "If... if I were to say that I have
come to realize the falsehood of all that?"

"I should understand it to be the charity which your pitiful heart
extends to one in my extremity. Your instinct was not at fault."

"It was! It was!"

But he was not to be driven out of his conviction. He shook his head,
his countenance gloomy. "No man who was not evil could have done by you
what I have done, however deep the provocation. I perceive it clearly
now--as men in their last hour perceive hidden things."

"Oh, why are you so set on death?" she cried upon a despairing note.

"I am not," he answered with a swift resumption of his more habitual
manner. "'Tis death that is so set on me. But at least I meet it without