to help you!"

She made an effort to speak, but no words came; she could only bow her
head to accept his homage, while his asseverations of loyalty and love
and impotent help came crowding upon his first utterance--the
immoderate outpouring of a deep, knightly soul, unused to confess
itself--the barriers of reserve once overcome by the stinging sense of
the irreparable wrong of which the revelation to this guileless,
confiding girlish nature had suddenly wrenched every memory that once
had been happiness, out of her young life--yet, in the very immensity of
her anguish, had searched to the inmost truth of her woman's fibre and,
in the fierce unfolding, had found it wholly noble.

As he knelt, still protesting, yet out of his great reverence, using no
word to wound her--the more compassionate because he might not denounce
the one who had wronged her--it was as if he were looking up to a
beloved daughter, immeasurably above him, who yet had need of his
knightly protection. He did not know that he was speaking--he did not
know what passed--only that deep in his soul he prayed to comfort her.

Slowly, with expression, the hot passion melted into a softer mood; his
grasp relaxed and she withdrew her hand, seamed and marred with red
lines where he had unconsciously tortured it; yet in her misery she was
grateful to be reached across the awful gulf of loneliness that
separated her from the world by a sense that such loyalty yet remained
to her.

She laid her hand lightly on his head, the fingers moving for a
moment--half in caress--half in benediction, while he felt her almost
imperceptible gesture dismissing this unusual audience where soul had
faced soul on the brink of a great catastrophe; and he rose to meet the
strange, luminous, unsmiling gaze of the great dark eyes which yesterday
had been almost the eyes of a child.

She pointed to the loggia, where the morning breeze came freshly laden
with the fragrance of myriad blossoms that were just opening to the
gladness of the sunrise--a sunrise over the beautiful, fabled slopes of
Cyprus--while shadows still lay on the flower-gemmed plains that
stretched between them and the sea. Ah, yes, the cool, blue, restless
sea stretched far between her island realm and the proud Venetian home
from whence she had sailed a happy girl--one little year before--to meet
her radiant visions of the future; and now, in all the splendor of the
morning, for her the light of life had died fo