and his voice was so low that it was
almost a whisper--though it was not one. For the first time she felt
something stir in her stunned mind--as if thought were wakening--fear--a
vague quaking. Her wan small face began to wonder and in the dark
roundness of her eyes a question was to be seen like a drowned thing
slowly rising from the deeps of a pool. But she asked no question. She
only waited a few moments and let him look at her until she said at last
in a voice as near a whisper as his own.

"I--will believe you."

CHAPTER XVII

He was alone with the Duchess. The doors were closed, and the world shut
out by her own order. She leaned against the high back of her chair,
watching him intently as she listened. He walked slowly up and down the
room with long paces. He had been doing it for some time and he had told
her from beginning to end the singular story of what had happened when
he found Robin lying face downward on the moss in Mersham Wood.

This is what he was saying in a low, steady voice.

"She had not once thought of what most women would have thought of
before anything else. If I were speaking to another person than yourself
I should say that she was too ignorant of the world. To you I will say
that she is not merely a girl--she is the unearthly luckless embodiment
of the pure spirit of Love. She knew only worship and the rapt giving of
gifts. Her unearthliness made him forget earth himself. Folly and
madness of course! Incredible madness--it would seem to most people--a
decently intelligent lad losing his head wholly and not regaining his
senses until it was too late to act sanely. But perhaps not quite
incredible to you and me. There must have been days which seemed to
him--and lads like him--like the last hours of a condemned man. In the
midst of love and terror and the agony of farewells--what time was there
for sanity?"

"You _believe_ her?" the Duchess said.

"Yes," impersonally. "In spite of the world, the flesh and the devil. I
also know that no one else will. To most people her story will seem a
thing trumped up out of a fourth rate novel. The law will not listen to
it. You will--when you see her unawakened face."

"I have seen it," was the Duchess' interpolation. "I saw it when she
went upon her knees and prayed that I would let her go to Mersham Wood.
There was something inexplicable in her remoteness from fear and shame.
She was only woe's self. I did not comprehend. I was merely