and whose love wouldn't change for
fifty mysteries--what's the matter with telling him all about it?"

"Are you sure your love wouldn't change?" she asked, still trembling.

"Did _yours_ change when they told you things about me? Did it change when
they arrested me and put me in prison? Yes, by Jove, it _did_ change, it
grew stronger, and that's the way mine would change, that's the only way."

He spoke so earnestly and with such a thrill of fondness that Alice was
reassured, and giving him her hand with a happy little gesture, she said:
"I know, dear. You see, I love you so much that--if anything should come
between us, why--it would just kill me."

"Nothing will come between us," he said simply, and then after a pause: "So
there _is_ a mystery."

"I'm--I'm afraid so."

"Ah, I knew it. I figured it out from a lot of little things. That's all
I've had to do here, and--for instance, I said to myself: 'How the devil
does she happen to speak English without any accent?' You can't tell me
that the cousin of a poor wood carver in Belgium would know English as you
do. It's part of the mystery, eh?"

"Why--er," she stammered, "I have always known English."

"Exactly, but how? And I suppose you've always known how to do those
corking fine embroideries that the priests are so stuck on? But how did you
learn? And how does it come that you look like a dead swell? And where did
you get those hands like a saint in a stained-glass window? And that hair?
I'll bet you anything you like you're a princess in disguise."

"I'm _your_ princess, dear," she smiled.

"Now for the mystery," he persisted. "Go on, what is it?"

At this her lovely face clouded and her eyes grew sad. "It's not the kind
of mystery you think, Lloyd; I--I can't tell you about it very
well--because--" She hesitated.

"Don't you worry, little sweetheart. I don't care what it is, I don't care
if you're the daughter of a Zulu chief." Then, seeing her distress, he said
tenderly: "Is it something you don't understand?"

"That's it," she answered in a low voice, "it's something I don't
understand."

"Ah! Something about yourself?"

"Ye-es."

"Does anyone else know it?"

"No, no one _could_ know it, I--I've been afraid to speak of it."

"Afraid?"

She nodded, and again he noticed that the pupils of her eyes were widening
and contracting.

"And that is why you said you wouldn't marry me?"

"Yes, that is why."

He stopped in perplexity. He saw that,