ture had led him. 'I must
feel all this for certain. How do I know but what you have brought it
about by some cunning intrigue for your own purposes? Speak!'

For Leta to stop now was destruction. Though to go on might bring no
profit to her, yet her safety depended upon closing forever the path of
reconciliation toward which his mind seemed to stray. And step by step,
shrouding as far as possible her own agency, she spread out before him
that basis of fact upon which she so well knew how to erect a false
superstructure. She told him how the intimacy of AEnone and Cleotos had
led her to keep watch--how AEnone had once confessed having had a lover
in the days of her obscurity and poverty--how that this Greek was that
same lover--and how improbable it was that he could have been domiciled
in that house by chance, or for any other purpose than that of being in
a situation to renew former intimacies. She told how, after long
suspicion, she had settled this identity of the former lover with the
slave--and how she had seen them, in the twilight of that very day,
standing near the window and addressing each other endearingly by their
own familiar names. As Sergius listened, the evident truthfulness of the
facts gradually impressed themselves upon him; and no longer doubting
his disgrace, he closed his heart against all further hope and charity
and affection. The pleasant past no longer whispered its memories to his
heart--those were now stifled and dead.

'And what reward for all this do you demand?' he hissed forth, seizing
Leta by the arm, 'For of course you have not thus dogged her steps day
after day, without expectation of recompense from me.'

Did he mean this--that she was capable of asking reward? Or was he
cunningly trying her nature, to see whether she might prove worthy of
the great recompense which she had promised herself? It was almost too
much now to expect; but her heart beat fast as she saw or fancied she
saw some strange significance in the gaze which he fastened upon her.
Babbling incoherently, she told how she did not wish reward--how she had
done it all for love of him--how she would be content to serve him for
life, with no other recompense than his smile--and the like. Still that
gaze was fastened upon her with penetrating power, more and more
confusing her, and again she babbled forth the same old expressions of
disinterested attachment. How it was that at last he understood her
secret thoughts and as