! how could I be so blind?"

She grew very pale as she sank back again upon the couch from which she
had risen. It seemed to her as though a thousand years had drifted
by since she had stood beside this man under the summer leaves of the
Stephanien, and he had kissed her childish lips, and thanked her for her
loving gift. And now--they had met thus!

He said nothing. He stood paralyzed, gazing at her. There had been no
added bitterness needed in the cup which he drank for his brother's
sake, yet this bitterness surpassed all other; it seemed beyond his
strength to leave her in the belief that he was guilty. She in whom all
fair and gracious things were met; she who was linked by her race to
his past and his youth; she whose clear eyes in her childhood had looked
upon him in that first hour of the agony that he had suffered then, and
still suffered on, in the cause of a coward and an ingrate.

She was pale still; and her eyes were fixed on him with a gaze that
recalled to him the look with which "Petite Reine" had promised that
summer day to keep his secret, and tell none of that misery of which she
had been witness.

"They thought that you were dead," she said at length, while her voice
sank very low. "Why have you lived like this?"

He made no answer.

"It was cruel to Philip," she went on, while her voice still shook.
"Child though I was, I remember his passion of grief when the news came
that you had lost your life. He has never forgotten you. So often now he
will still speak of you! He is in your camp. We are traveling together.
He will be here this evening. What delight it will give him to know his
dearest friend is living! But why--why--have kept him ignorant, if you
were lost to all the world beside?"

Still he answered her nothing. The truth he could not tell; the lie he
would not. She paused, waiting reply. Receiving none, she spoke once
more, her words full of that exquisite softness which was far more
beautiful in her than in women less tranquil, less chill, and less
negligent in ordinary moments.

"Mr. Cecil, I divined rightly! I knew that you were far higher than your
grade in Africa; I felt that in all things, save in some accident of
position, we were equals. But why have you condemned yourself to this
misery? Your life is brave, is noble, but it must be a constant torture
to such as you? I remember well what you were--so well, that I wonder we
have never recognized each other before now. The exi