roon lay where she had fallen, a pitiful little huddled heap;
never once had her pain-dulled eyes left the giant, or the place where
he might appear. And now she saw him coming toward her, not as a
ministering angel, but like a figure of wrath, swinging his great
broad-ax in one hand as easily as another man might swing a cutlas. She
shivered as he stood over her, accusing.

"Milo!" she panted, gazing up at his magnificent height in plaintive
supplication.

"Serpent!" he replied, and the utter contempt in his voice went to her
heart like a sword-thrust. "Hast a God to pray to before I send thy
false soul adrift?"

"I have but one God, Milo; to Him I should not pray."

She fixed her burning gaze upon him, and in her pained eyes blazed all
the tremendous love that actuated her small being.

"A God thou canst not pray to, traitor? Art afraid, then?"

"Not afraid, Milo," she whispered, and her eyelids drooped. "I cannot
pray to one who looks down upon me as thou dost."

"I?" The giant's expression changed to frowning displeasure rather than
anger. "I?" he repeated.

"Thee, my heart. Thou'rt my god, my all. For thee I have done this
thing. For thee, who even now canst not see where lies the falsity.
Milo"--her weak voice sank to a low murmur--"I beg thy forgiveness. My
love for thee caused me to sin. My life is to pay the supreme price. Let
me die at least in thy forgiveness."

"Forgive? Forgive thee, who worked for the destruction of the being I
worship? Rather shall I speed thy soul!"

Pascherette struggled to a kneeling position, crossed her tiny hands on
her panting breast, and looked full into his eyes as a wounded hart
looks at the hunter. Her lip quivered, her small, gold-tinted face, once
so piquant and full of allure, had taken on a gray hue from her pain,
but there was no hiding the great, overwhelming love for the giant that
gleamed in her eyes.

"Milo," she said, and the word was a caress, "Milo, if thou must, strike
swiftly. Yet again I ask, forgive."

The giant slowly lowered his great ax, and his honest heart answered the
pitiful plea. His deep chest swelled and throbbed; into his face crept
the look that had been there on that day when he told Pascherette he
loved her--loved her, yet worshiped Dolores as his gods. Letting the ax
fall to his elbow by the thong at the haft, he stooped and tenderly
picked up the girl, carrying her as a child carries a doll; yet his face
was averted from Pascherett