wered slowly. He turned to her, not touching her, yet
so close that he felt her breath on his sleeveless arm. "She loved him.
And she did not know it."

"Not know it?" Varia said. She turned her face toward him, and the
moonlight fell full on the warm whiteness of her throat. "I think she
should have known. And then, she being great, and he so lowly, I think
she should have told him that she knew."

"If--if you were she," said Nicanor, and his voice shook, "would you
have told him?"

"Oh, I should have told him!" Varia said, and her voice was low and
strained. "I should have said--'I want you to love me! I want you to
love me and stay with me always--'"

Nicanor bowed his face forward on his hands. Lady Varia, leaning
forward, put her hand upon his shoulder.

"Were I that woman, I should have wanted to love him if he had been like
that," she said, tremulously, yet very sweetly.

Nicanor straightened up and caught both her hands.

"Ah, no, my lady, you would not!" he said hoarsely. "You would have
driven him from you and been angered beyond forgiveness. You would have
hated and despised him, because--oh, don't you understand, it is the
only thing you could have done! If she had said that--how could--how
could he have left her?"

"But why did he leave her?" Varia asked. "Could he not have stayed
always in the garden?"

Nicanor mastered himself with an effort.

"No," he said thickly. "Because he was only a man--and some day--it
would be more than he could endure. If he saw that in her sweet
innocence she did not realize the temptation she held out to him, he
might--he might have done that which always after he must regret."

He raised her face with one hand and looked at her. Her eyes were
closed, her red mouth quivered. He hesitated, his breath coming hard;
then he bent his head and kissed her. As he took her in his arms, she
shivered, crying softly:

"I am afraid! Oh, what is this that you would do!"

But when he loosened his hold she clung to him, murmuring:

"Nay, I am not afraid! I love your kisses. Oh, you must not go as did
that youth--always you must stay within this garden--"

Then Marcus crept from his shelter and stood before them, silent, his
knife gleaming in his hand. Nicanor, lifting his head, saw him suddenly,
and started, for this meant death by tortures no man might name. He
sprang to his feet and thrust Lady Varia behind him in the same motion,
so that in the darkness his body hid her