f the living, loving world she
could never see. Somehow she had unconsciously fancied that with a
little dreaming she could live happy in Dolores' happiness, as by a
proxy, and she had never called it love, any more than she would have
dared to hope for love in return. Yet it was that, and nothing
else,--the love that is so hopeless and starving, and yet so innocent,
that it can draw the illusion of an airy nourishment from that which to
another nature would be the fountain of all jealousy and hatred.

But now, without reason and without warning, even that was taken from
her, and in its place something burned that she did not know, save that
it was a bad thing, and made even blackness blacker. She heard their
voices still. They were happy together, while she was alone outside, her
forehead resting against the chill glass, and her hands half numb upon
the stone; and so it would always be hereafter. They would go, and take
her life with them, and she should be left behind, alone for ever; and a
great revolt against her fate rose quickly in her breast like a flame
before the wind, and then, as if finding nothing to consume, sank down
again into its own ashes, and left her more lonely than before. The
voices had ceased now, or else the lovers were speaking very low,
fearing, perhaps, that some one might be listening at the window. If
Inez had heard their words at first, she would have stopped her ears or
gone to a distance, for the child knew what that sort of honour meant,
and had done as much before. But the unformed sound had been good to
hear, and she missed it. Perhaps they were sitting close and, hand in
hand, reading all the sweet unsaid things in one another's eyes. There
must be silent voices in eyes that could see, she thought. She took
little thought of the time, yet it seemed long to her since they had
spoken. Perhaps they had gone to another room. She moved to the next
window and listened there, but no sound came from within. Then she heard
footfalls, and one was her father's. Two men were coming out by the
corridor, and she had not time to reach the sentry-box. With her hands
out before her, she went lightly away from the windows to the outer side
of the broad terrace, and cowered down by the balustrade as she ran
against it, not knowing whether she was in the moonlight or the shade.
She had crossed like a shadow and was crouching there before Mendoza and
the King came out. She knew by their steady tread, that