"

Then I spoke, beside myself the while. I remember nothing that I said:
she heard me in silence, standing erect above me where I kneeled. The
light was very faint; the lamp swung to and fro on its bronze chain; I
saw only the eyes of the woman burning their will into mine. She bent
her head slightly: her voice was very low. She said only, "I have known
it a long time. Yes, you love me, but how? How?"

How? I knew no words that could tell her. Human tongues never have
language enough for that: a look can tell it. I looked at her.

She trembled for a moment as though I had hurt her. Soon she regained
her empire over herself. "But how?" she muttered very low, bending over
me her beautiful head, nearly touching mine. "But how? Enough to--?"

She paused. Enough? Enough for what? Enough to deny heaven, to defy
hell, to brave death and torment, to do all that a man could do: who
could do more?

"And I love you--I." She murmured the words very low: the evening wind
which touches the roses was never softer than her voice. She brushed my
hair with her lips. "I love you," she repeated. "For you are strong, you
are strong."

Kneeling before her there, I took her in my arms. I drew her close to
me: I drank the wine of Paradise--the wine that makes men mad.

But she stopped me, drew herself away from me, yet gently, without
wrath. "No," she said, "not yet, not yet." Then she added, lower still,
"You must deserve me."

Deserve her? I did not comprehend. I knew well that I did not deserve my
joy, poor fool that I was, mere man of the people, with the trestles of
the village fair for all my royal throne. But, since she loved me, a
crowd of ideas confused and giddy thronged on my brain and whirled madly
together. Up above in the belfries and the towers in my infancy, with
the clear blue air about me and the peopled world at my feet, I had
dreamed so many foolish gracious things--things heroical, fantastical,
woven from the legends of saints and the poems of wandering minstrels.
When she spoke to me thus these old beautiful fancies came back to my
memory. If she wished me to become a soldier for her sake, I thought--

She looked at me, burning my soul with her eyes, that grew sombre yet
brilliant, like the Tiber water lighted by a golden moon. "You must
deserve me," she repeated: "you must deliver me. You are strong."

"I am ready," I answered. I was still kneeling before her. I had at my
throat a rude cross that my mother ha