uld
not trace the road by which you left Washington; chance that Colonel
Burr gave me the clew for which I sought; chance that of the nine horses
I rode to a stand between Philadelphia and Elizabethtown, none failed me
in my need."

She gave me a mocking glance over her fan. "_Madre de los Dolores!_ What
a pity! A little time, and the gulf will roll between."

"I will cross that gulf!"

"Not so; for it is the gulf of the Cross," she mocked. "I go the way of
Vera Cruz--the True Cross. No heretic may pass that way."

The words struck down my last hope. It was the truth--a double truth.
The way of my body was barred by the city of the Cross; the way of my
spirit by that which to her the Cross symbolized.

"So this is the end," I replied. "We have come to the parting of the
ways. Do not fear that I shall weary you with annoying persistence. I
shall go my way before sunrise to-morrow. Only--let me ask that this
last hour with you may hold its share of sweetness with the bitterness
of parting,--Alisanda!"

"An hour?" she repeated. "The air in here is close."

She laid her fingers lightly upon my arm, and we passed out into the
moonlit balcony. For a time we sat silent, she gazing out across the
broken slopes of the town, I gazing at her still white face and shadowy
eyes. Her loveliness was part with the night and the moonlight and the
scarlet bloom of the climber upon the balcony rail.

At last I could no longer endure the thought that she was lost to me; I
could no longer deny utterance to my love and longing.

"Alisanda! dearest one! Is there then no hope that I may win you? I have
no gallant speeches--my love is voiceless; no less is it a love that
shall endure always. Alisanda! _my_ dearest one! is my love of no worth
to you? Let your heart speak! Can it not give me one word of hope?"

My voice failed me. Throughout my passionate appeal I failed to see the
slightest change in her calm face. I had failed to stir her even to
mockery. Truly all was now at an end! I bowed my head and groaned in
most unmanly fashion.

The low murmur of her voice roused me to despairing eagerness. She spoke
in a tone of light inconsequence, yet I seized upon the words as the
drowning man clutches at straws.

"Love?--love?" she repeated. "The word has become a jest. Men protest
that they know the meaning of love--that they suffer its bitterest
pangs. Yet speak to them of the days of chivalry, when gallant knights
bore the colors o