ne; and that I pray Heaven to keep far from you."

"Alack! good Grifone, what sayings are these for a day that should be
happy?" urged the warm-hearted girl, with eyes ready to fill.

"Madonna, let me endure the thought of them alone, I entreat your
Grace."

"Never, while I live, Grifone. You make me most unhappy. Will you not
kiss me?"

"Never, while I live, Madonna, if I am to live honest."

Molly went white and red, and stood hesitating, uncertain whether to cry
or be angry. Either might have been a vent for her distress, which was
real. Commanding herself with pains--

"I will require you to speak with me after supper," she said, after a
pause for the struggle.

Grifone bowed his head and backed away from her. She, being boundless in
capacity for the affections of her kind, spent the interval with an
aching heart.

Directly supper was done she hunted for the Secretary. The affair had
by now throbbed itself into a question of her physical ease. Her
heartstrings were at a dangerous stretch, she quivering at the point of
tears. Master Grifone, for his part, had taken very good care that the
Duke of Nona should be occupied, and himself not hard to find. Molly
came upon him in a gallery of arras; caught him crouching there with his
face hidden in his hands. She went to him at once, full of the trouble
he showed her, sat by him, put her arm round his neck, and tried to draw
his head up. Grifone turned her a white, miserable face.

"Ah!" he said, husky with reproach, "ah! you have come with the ardours
of an angel leaping in you; yet no cruelty could in truth be sharper."

"Cruel? Cruel? Oh, Grifone, nobody has ever said this of me before!"
whimpered poor Molly. She was swirling in wilder water than she knew.

"The cruelty is unconscious, yet none the less bitter for that," he
complained; and then, all at once, he turned fiercely to rend her.
"What! When I throb for your footfall, or when I lean swooning to the
wall for the scent of your hair as you pass; when I urge against your
chamber door that I may feed upon the sound of your breath, or hunt for
broken bread under your table that I may grow drunk on what your fingers
have touched! When I go raving at night, weeping by day, with a knife in
my heart, tears that scald my eyes! When with these pains to endure,
these perils to skirt, heights to fly, you will speak, touch me, breathe
upon me, tempt me to greet you with kissing of the lips--ah, heaven and
hell!