ied, clinging to him when he went to her. "'Twas I
awaked you. I called, though I did not speak."

"I heard, as I should hear if I lay dead," he answered low.

Her hair was all unbound for the night--her black, wondrous hair which
he so loved--and from its billowy cloud her face looked at him wild and
white, her mouth quivering.

"Gerald," she said, "look out with me."

Together they looked forth from the wide window into the beauty of the
night, up into the great vault of Heaven, where the large silver moon
sailed in the blue, the stars shining faintly before her soft
brilliance.

"We are Pagans," she said, "poor Pagans who oftenest seem to pray to a
cruel thing we do not know but only crouch before in terror, lest it
crush us. But when we look up into such a Heaven as this, its majesty
and stillness seem a presence, and we dare to utter what our hearts cry
out, and know we shall be heard." She caught his hand and held it to
her heart, which he felt leap beneath it. "There is no power would harm
a woman's child," she cried--"a little unborn thing which has not
breathed--because it would wreak vengeance on herself! There is none,
Gerald, is there?" And she clung to him, her uplifted face filled with
such lovely, passionate, woman's fear and pleading as made him sweep
her to his breast and hold her silently--because he could not speak.

"For I have learned to be afraid," she murmured brokenly, against his
breast. "And I was kneeling here to pray--to pray with all my
soul--that if there were so cruel a thing 'twould _kill_ me
now--blight me--take me from you--that I might die in torture--but not
bring suffering on my love, and on an innocent thing."

And her heart beat like some terrified caged eaglet against his own,
and her eyes were wild with woe. But the wondrous stillness of the deep
night enfolded them, as if Nature held them in her great arms which
comfort so. And her stars gazed calmly down, even as though their
calmness were answering speech.

_CHAPTER XXX_

_On Tyburn Hill_

There was none knew her as her husband did--none in the world--though
so many were her friends and worshippers. As he loved her he knew her,
the passion of his noble heart giving him clearer and more watchful
eyes than any other. Truth was, indeed, that she herself did not know
how much he saw and pondered on and how tender his watch upon her was.

The dark shadow in her eyes he had first noted, the look which would
pas