ether they ascended to the chamber where in solitude she had
spent the day. Her feelings were those of a child caught in an act of
disobedience, and she was angry with herself and her weakness that
it should be so. Yet within the room she stood with bent head, never
glancing at her companion, in whose eyes there was a look of blended
anger and amazement as he observed her. At length in calm, level tones:

"Why did you run away?" he asked.

The question was to her anger as a gust of wind to a smouldering fire.
She threw back her head defiantly, and fixed him with a glance as fierce
as his own.

"I will tell you," she cried, and suddenly stopped short. The fire died
from her eyes, and they grew wide in wonder--in fascinated wonder--to
see a deep stain overspreading one side of his grey doublet, from the
left shoulder downwards. Her wonder turned to horror as she realized the
nature of that stain and remembered that one of her men had fired upon
him.

"You are wounded?" she faltered.

A sickly smile came into his face, and seemed to accentuate its pallor.
He made a deprecatory gesture. Then, as if in that gesture he had
expended his last grain of strength, he swayed suddenly as he stood.
He made as if to reach a chair, but at the second step he stumbled, and
without further warning he fell prone at her feet, his left hand upon
his heart, his right outstretched straight from the shoulder. The loss
of blood he had sustained, following upon the fatigue and sleeplessness
that had been his of late, had demanded its due from him, man of iron
though he was.

Upon the instant her anger vanished. A great fear that he was dead
descended upon her, and to heighten the horror of it came the thought
that he had received his death-wound through her agency. With a moan of
anguish she went down upon her knees beside him. She raised his head
and pillowed it in her lap, calling to him by name, as though her
voice alone must suffice to bring him back to life and consciousness.
Instinctively she unfastened his doublet at the neck, and sought to draw
it away that she might see the nature of his hurt and staunch the wound
if possible, but her strength ebbed away from her, and she abandoned her
task, unable to do more than murmur his name.

"Crispin, Crispin, Crispin!"

She stooped and kissed the white, clammy forehead, then his lips, and
as she did so a tremor ran through her, and he opened his eyes. A moment
they looked dull and lifel