ed lily
flowers. There was a strange look upon it--a look that made
Godwin feel afraid, he knew not of what.

"Why did I take you into my inn yonder in Beirut when you were
the pilgrims Peter and John? Why did I find you the best horses
in Syria and guide you to the Al-je-bal? Why did I often dare
death by torment for you there? Why did I save the three of you?
And why, for all this weary while, have I--who, after all, am
nobly born--become the mock of soldiers and the tire-woman of the
princess of Baalbec?

"Shall I answer?" she went on, laughing. "Doubtless in the
beginning because I was the agent of Sinan, charged to betray
such knights as you are into his hands, and afterwards because my
heart was filled with pity and love for--the lady Rosamund."

Again the lightning flashed, and this time that strange look had
spread from Masouda's face to the face of Godwin.

"Masouda," he said in a whisper, "oh! think me no vain fool, but
since it is best perhaps that both should know full surely, tell
me, is it as I have sometimes--"

"Feared?" broke in Masouda with her little mocking laugh. "Sir
Godwin, it is so. What does your faith teach--the faith in which
I was bred, and lost, but that now is mine again--because it is
yours? That men and women are free, or so some read it. Well, it
or they are wrong. We are not free. Was I free when first I saw
your eyes in Beirut, the eyes for which I had been watching all
my life, and something came from you to me, and I--the cast-off
plaything of Sinan--loved you, loved you, loved you--to my own
doom? Yes, and rejoiced that it was so, and still rejoice that it
is so, and would choose no other fate, because in that love I
learned that there is a meaning in this life, and that there is
an answer to it in lives to be, otherwhere if not here. Nay,
speak not. I know your oath, nor would I tempt you to its
breaking. But, Sir Godwin, a woman such as the lady Rosamund
cannot love two men," and as she spoke Masouda strove to search
his face while the shaft went home.

But Godwin showed neither surprise nor pain.

"So you know what I have known for long," he said, "so long that
my sorrow is lost in the hope of my brother's joy. Moreover, it
is well that she should have chosen the better knight."

"Sometimes," said Masouda reflectively, "sometimes I have watched
the lady Rosamund, and said to myself, 'What do you lack? You are
beautiful, you are highborn, you are learned, you are brave