om
the clear sky, I saw you. Yes, that was years ago. I remember it
perfectly. No clouds flecked the wondrous blue of the sky, no moon
shone, and yet the stars made darkness impossible. Nothing was to be
seen around me but the wide stretch of sand, no sound stirred the
silence. And I was alone, all alone with my heart and the Great Spirit
of the desert. Then I saw your face, and heard your voice. Ay, as
plainly as I have seen and heard this night. I knew I should meet you in
reality. I dreamed of to-night then; I dreamed of what I should tell
you, dreamed of what we should be to each other. Do you wonder, then, at
what I felt as I saw the look in Briarfield's eyes, when I heard the
laughter in his voice? What does he feel to what I feel? What are his
hopes, his thoughts to mine? And so I come to you, signorina, and I ask
you to forget him, to forget that he ever spoke to you. I ask you, nay,
I plead with you--will you be my wife?"

Olive could hear the beating of her own heart, and she knew that Herbert
Briarfield's pleadings were but as idle words compared with what this
man had said. Nay more, she knew that although her fear for him had not
left her, she could never marry the honest young Devonshire squire.
Whether she loved Ricordo or no she was not sure, but she knew that the
thought of him made it impossible for her to think of another. All
distinctions of race, of education, of associations were broken down.
There was no such thing as race. This man loved her, and his love
stirred her heart in a way she could not understand. Everything was
wondrously real to her, and yet nothing was real. Somehow his voice
seemed the voice of long ago. When Herbert Briarfield had spoken to her
that day, the thought of her promise to Leicester did not seem real,
save when she thought of what Ricordo would say, but now the past became
vivid again. She had never felt that she must tell Briarfield anything
concerning her love for Leicester, but she knew that if she were to
promise to be the wife of Ricordo, she could hide nothing from him. His
eyes would be like the eyes of a basilisk piercing her very soul.

"Will you?" continued Ricordo. "I ask in all humility, but I cannot, no,
I cannot take a refusal. I cannot conceive that you would cast me into
darkness. You will fulfil the dream of my life, you will translate the
dream into reality. Tell me, signorina, tell me!"

She looked into his face, and was frightened. He looked pale, i