brought together... For this I was
commanded to learn the secret of my failure. Yes, I, who thought myself
so wise, have failed... Failed at the crucial test, because my passions
governed me... because my heart was weak, for sake of love... Oh, my
lost strength--my lost self-restraint... Must I again tread the weary
road... and only overcome to fail again?"

She turned aside and hid her face in her hands, while all that dusky
veil of rippling hair fell over her like a cloud.

"I am so human still," she moaned--"so human that, woman-like, I
deceived myself, and dreamt of love perfected here, when I might have
known--I might have known... But, oh, to lose him thus! To stand
before his eyes shamed, sin-stricken, criminal--I cannot bear that--it
is beyond my strength..."

A new fierce passion seemed suddenly to take possession of her soul.
She raised herself once more, and the old lovely light and splendour
glowed in her eyes.

"There is but one way to win his forgiveness," she cried breathlessly.
"He will pity me then... his heart will soften... he will remember what
I said on that strange happy night when once again we met... I am but a
woman who loves. Earth holds no weaker thing... and I loved you,
Julian... you only--you alone! always--always--always. Men live for
love--a woman can but die. For the life I took I give my own--it is
just... Yet if but once, oh, beloved, I could see your pitying eyes,
and hear your tender voice... and know that you--forgave..."

The light faded from her face once more. Only a hunted, despairing
creature leaned back on that solitary couch.

A voice came shrilly from the outer room: "Are you all right, Princess?
Can you really bear that heat?"

Monotonously--vaguely--her own voice replied: "I am all right--I do not
even feel the heat."

Then, all again grew still, and her eyes closed, and her heart beat in a
dull, laboured way.

Once more the shrill voice reached her; but it sounded far off, and
indistinct: "I hope you won't go off to sleep, like you did the last
time, Princess; you frightened me terribly."

The effort to reply was harder to make; yet once again the slow, sweet
voice vibrated through the hushed and stifling heat:

"I shall not sleep--do not be alarmed."

Five minutes later, when Mrs Ray Jefferson lifted her eyes from an
examination of her suffering foot, she was surprised to see the Princess
standing in the archway of the further room, exactly a