ot be made public property; but she would
not let me go far, peremptorily stopping me within five yards
or so, saying that she feared surprise. So it came to pass that,
however unwillingly, I heard all that passed.

'Thou knowest, Nyleptha,' said Sir Henry, 'that it was for none
of these things that I asked thee to meet me at this lonely place.
Nyleptha, waste not the time in pleasantry, but listen to me,
for -- I love thee.'

As he said the words I saw her face break up, as it were, and
change. The coquetry went out of it, and in its place there
shone a great light of love which seemed to glorify it, and make
it like that of the marble angel overhead. I could not help
thinking that it must have been a touch of prophetic instinct
which made the long dead Rademas limn, in the features of the
angel of his inspiring vision, so strange a likeness of his own
descendant. Sir Henry, also, must have observed and been struck
by the likeness, for, catching the look upon Nyleptha's face,
he glanced quickly from it to the moonlit statue, and then back
again at his beloved.

'Thou sayest thou dost love me,' she said in a low voice, 'and
thy voice rings true, but how am I to know that thou dost speak
the truth?'

'Though,' she went on with proud humility, and in the stately
third person which is so largely used by the Zu-Vendi, 'I be
as nothing in the eyes of my lord,' and she curtseyed towards
him, 'who comes from among a wonderful people, to whom my people
are but children, yet here am I a queen and a leader of men,
and if I would go to battle a hundred thousand spears shall sparkle
in my train like stars glimmering down the path of the bent moon.
And although my beauty be a little thing in the eyes of my lord,'
and she lifted her broidered skirt and curtseyed again, 'yet
here among my own people am I held right fair, and ever since
I was a woman the great lords of my kingdom have made quarrel
concerning me, as though forsooth,' she added with a flash of
passion, 'I were a deer to be pulled down by the hungriest wolf,
or a horse to be sold to the highest bidder. Let my lord pardon
me if I weary my lord, but it hath pleased my lord to say that
he loves me, Nyleptha, a Queen of the Zu-Vendi, and therefore
would I say that though my love and my hand be not much to my
lord, yet to me are they all.'

'Oh!' she cried, with a sudden and thrilling change of voice,
and modifying her dignified mode of address. 'Oh, how can I