ce. I intended to wait until my sword was at his
throat and then I would have said to him, 'Give up the woman whom I have
loved all my life, and go unhurt!' He himself should have chosen. Was
not that fair?"

"Fair! It was generous! Go on! Go on!"

"The word had been given; our swords were crossed. And at that moment,
she, Adrienne, the woman whom I loved, stood before us. With her were
Italian police come to arrest me! There was one letter alone of mine,
written in a hasty moment, which could have been used in evidence
against me at my former trial, and which would have secured for me a
harsher sentence. That letter had fallen into her hands; and she had
given it over to my bitter enemy, the chief of the Italian police. I was
betrayed, betrayed by the woman whom I had braved all dangers to see! It
was she who had brought them; she who--without remorse or
hesitation--calmly handed me over to twenty-five years' captivity in a
prison cell!"

Margharita freed herself from his arms. She was very pale, and her limbs
were shaking. But what a fire in those dark, cruel eyes.

"Go on! Go on!" she cried. "Let me hear the rest."

"Then, as I stood there, Margharita, love shriveled up, and hate reigned
in its place. The memory of the oath of our Order flashed into my mind.
A curtain seemed raised before my eyes. I saw the long narrow room of
our meeting place. I saw the dark, faithful faces of my comrades. I
heard their firm voices--'Vengeance upon traitors, vengeance upon
traitors!' She, too, this woman who had betrayed me, had worn our flower
upon her bosom and in her hair! She had come under the ban of that oath.
Margharita, I threw my sword into the sea, and I raised my clasped hands
to the sky, and I swore that, were it the last day of my life, the day
of my release should see me avenged. Let them hide in the uttermost
corners of the earth, I cried, that false woman and her English lover,
still I would find them out, and they should taste of my vengeance! To
my trial I went, with that oath written in my heart. I carried it with
me into my prison cell, and day by day and year by year I repeated it to
myself. It kept me alive; the desire of it grew into my being. Even now
it burns in my heart!

"During my captivity I was allowed to see my lawyer, and I made over by
deed so much, to be paid every year to the funds of our Order at the
London Branch, for our headquarters had been moved there after my first
arrest. Day by day