,
and instead, upon the finely chiselled features and in the blue eyes,
rested a serene, if melancholy beauty, a quiet nobility born of
suffering. There rushed through Calvert's mind the thought that, after
all, that loveliness had at last developed into all that was best and
finest.

He stood thus looking at her in silence and thinking of these things,
and then he went slowly forward, scarce knowing how to address her or
explain his presence, who had so long avoided her.

"I am come," he says, at length, "to thank you for the great service
that you have this night rendered me and those other gentlemen engaged
with myself in the King's business. I dare not think what might have
been the fate of us all had you not come to our assistance. Were they
here they would, like myself, thank you with all their hearts."

"'Twas no great service," she says, "and I could scarce have done less
for one who has done so much--who has sacrificed so much for me."

"I have sacrificed nothing," says Calvert, in a low, compassionate
voice. "'Twas you who sacrificed yourself, and all in vain! Believe me,
I suffered for you in that knowledge. I should not have let you--should
have found a way, but I was weak and ill and scarcely struggled against
the fate that gave you to me. I wish that 'twere as easy to undo the
evil as for you to forget me."

"Forget you! I wish I could forget you. I have thought of you so much
that sometimes I wish I could forget you entirely. But I think 'tis out
of my power to do so now. I think I should have to be quite dead--and
even then I do not know--I am not sure--if you should speak to me I
think I would hear," she says, wildly, and covering her eyes with her
hand.

He looked at the dark-robed figure, the dark head bowed on the heaving
breast, and suddenly a joy such as he had never thought to feel ran
through his veins. He went over to her, and, lifting the hand from the
closed eyes, he put it to his lips.

"Adrienne," he says, tenderly and wonderingly, "you are crying! Why?"

"I am crying for so many things! For joy and despair and hope and dead
love, because this means nothing to you and everything to me, because I
love you and you love me not, because you once loved me--!" She stopped
in an access of anguish and, sobbing, knelt before him. The humility of
true love had at last mastered her.

"Not to me--not to me," he said, unsteadily, lifting her.

"And why not to you? There is no one so true, no