Emily crossed Europe in a special train, and after terrible
difficulties won his life from the Czar herself when every other means
had failed. He was condemned to imprisonment for life, and she gave her
word that she would never ask for any mitigation of that sentence.
Think of the generosity of that action! Although the man had treated
her vilely, and she was young and beautiful, yet she doomed herself to a
perpetual widowhood in order to save his life. I happen to know, too,
that her love for him was wholly dead."

"It was magnificent," he murmured with something that sounded like a
sob.

"She came to live in London, where her story was little known. That was
ten years ago. I think that I am almost the only person who knows the
whole truth about her, and if you ask me why I have told you, well, I
can only say that it was by instinct."

"Duchess," he said, "you have told me the story of a heroine--now let me
tell you the story of a fool. I came to London a very short time ago,
poor, friendless, and untried. She was the only person from whom I
received any spontaneous kindness whatever. She visited me when I was
ill, she asked me to her house, she encouraged me in my work, she showed
me how exquisite a thing the intelligent sympathy of a cultivated woman
can be to a man who is struggling for expression. And in
return--listen. There were others whom she had befriended--like me.
She had keen literary instincts, as you know, and it was her pleasure to
help in any way young beginners. She was also a woman and beautiful.
Some of them lost their heads; two especially. It was their fault--not
hers. They were presumptuous, and she rebuked them. They whined like
whipped curs, went wrong as it chanced afterwards, and were held up to
me as warnings. It was her vanity, they declared, which prompted her
kindness. We were all puppets to her--not men. She had no heart. When
my turn came I should be served like the rest. I loved her, Duchess;
who could help it? and the time came when we stood face to face, and I
saw the woman shining out of her eyes, and the gates of Heaven were
opened to me. Was there ever such transcendental folly as mine? I
locked the gates myself and remained--outside."

He looked away, and there was a short silence. A woman's song died
sweetly away in an ante-room beyond, the murmur of pleasant conversation
floated once more all around them. The Duchess unfurled a fan of wavy
white feathers and half sheltered