he comes. There would be shouts; I can hear
them. No, I will not have it! I can see her proud cursed face a-flush.
No! You think too much of what she has suffered. If I could have
suffered too! But suffering, shame, humiliation, these fall to women,
always have fallen. We have learnt to bear them so that we feel them
less than you. My dear lord, believe me! Her suffering is no great
thing. If we love we welcome it! Each throb of pain endured for love
becomes a thrill of joy. If I could have suffered too!"

It was strange to hear this girl with the streaming eyes and tormented
face bewail her fate in that she had not won that great privilege of
suffering. She knelt on the ground a splendid image of pain, and longed
for pain that she might prove thereby how little a thing she made of it.
The Chevalier drew a stool to her side and seating himself upon it
clasped her about the waist. She laid her cheek upon his knee just as a
dog will do.

"Sweetheart," said he, "I would have no woman suffer a pang for me had I
my will of the world. But since that may not be, I do not believe that
any woman could be deeper hurt than you are now."

"Not Clementina?"

"No."

Maria uttered a little sigh. Her pain gave her a sort of ownership of
the man who caused it. "Nor can she love as deep," she continued
quietly. "A Sobieski from the snows! Love was born here in Italy. She
robs me of you. I hate her." Then she raised her face eagerly. "Charles
Wogan may fail."

"You do not know him."

"The cleverest have made mistakes and died for them."

"Wogan makes mistakes like another, but somehow gets the better of them
in the end. There was a word he said to me when he begged for my
permission. I told him his plan was a mere dream. He answered he would
dream it true; he will."

"You should have waked him. You were the master, he the servant. You
were the King."

"And when can the King do what he wills instead of what he must? Maria,
if you and I had met before I sent Charles Wogan to search out a wife
for me--"

Maria Vittoria knelt up. She drew herself away.

"He chose her as your wife?"

"If only I had had time to summon him back!"

"He chose her--Charles Wogan. How I hate him!"

"I sent him to make the choice."

"And he might have gone no step beyond Bologna. There was I not a mile
distant ready to his hand! But I was too mean, too despicable--"

"Maria, hush!" And the troubled voice in which he spoke rang with so
much pai