he saved her before he thought of saving himself,
though with infinite difficulty and against her will.

Half paralyzed by her immeasurable grief, she lay against the parapet,
and the great sobs came evenly, as if they were counted, shaking her
from her head to her waist, and just leaving her a breathing space
between each one and the next. The jester felt that he could do nothing.
So long as she had seemed unconscious, he had tried to help her a little
by supporting her head with his hand and arm, as tenderly as if she had
been his own child. So long as she did not know what he was doing, she
was only a human being in distress, and a woman, and deep down in the
jester's nature there was a marvellous depth of pity for all things that
suffered--the deeper and truer because his own sufferings in the world
were great. But it was quite different now that she knew where she was
and recognized him. She was no longer a woman now, but a high-born lady,
one of the Queen's maids of honour, a being infinitely far removed above
his sphere, and whose hand he was not worthy to touch. He would have
dared to be much more familiar with the King himself than with this
young girl whom fate had placed in his keeping for a moment. In the
moonlight he watched her, and as he gazed upon her graceful figure and
small head and slender, bending arms, it seemed to him that she had come
down from an altar to suffer in life, and that it had been almost
sacrilege to lay his hands upon her shoulders and keep her from doing
her own will. He almost wondered how he had found courage to be so rough
and commanding. He was gentle of heart, though it was his trade to make
sharp speeches, and there were wonderful delicacies of thought and
feeling far down in his suffering cripple's nature.

"Come," he said softly, when he had waited a long time, and when he
thought she was growing more quiet. "You must let me take you away, Dona
Maria Dolores, for we cannot stay here."

"Take me back to him," she answered. "Let me go back to him!"

"No--to your father--I cannot take you to him. You will be safe there."

Dolores sprang to her feet before the dwarf could prevent her.

"To my father? oh, no, no, no! Never, as long as I live! I will go
anywhere, but not to him! Take your hands from me--do not touch me! I am
not strong, but I shall kill you if you try to take me to my father!"

Her small hands grasped the dwarfs wrists and wrung them with desperate
energy, a