ried my spirit far
more than anything else you could do. You did well. Do you think that
I did not appreciate your imperious anxiety for me; that I did not
respect your resolution to do what you thought right, or feel how much
it cost you? If anything in the ways of love like yours could pain me,
it would be the sort of reserved tenderness that never treats me as
frankly and simply as" ... "There was no need to name either of those
so dearly loved, so lately--and, alas! so differently--lost. Trusting
the loyalty of my love so absolutely in all else, can you not trust it
to accept willingly the enforcement of your will ... as you have
enforced it on all others you have ruled, from the soldiers of your
own world to the rest of your household? Ah! the light breaks through
the mist. Before you gave Enva her charge you said to me in her
presence, 'Forgive me what you force upon me;' as if I, above all,
were not your own to deal with as you will. Dearest, do you so wrong
her who loves you, and is honoured by your love, as to fancy that any
exertion of your authority could make her feel humbled in your eyes or
her own?"

It was impossible to answer. Nothing would have more deeply wounded
her simple humility, so free from self-consciousness, as the plain
truth; that as her character unfolded, the infinite superiority of her
nature almost awed me as something--save for the intense and
occasionally passionate tenderness of her love--less like a woman than
an angel.

"I was absorbed," she continued, "in the effort that had thrown Enva
into the slumber of obedience. I did not know or feel where I was or
what I had next to do. My thought, still concentrated, had forgotten
its accomplished purpose, and was bent on your danger. Somehow on the
cushioned pile I seemed to see a figure, strange to me, but which I
shall never forget. It was a young girl, very slight, pale, sickly,
with dark circles round the closed eyes, slumbering like Enva, but in
everything else Enva's very opposite. I suppose I was myself entranced
or dreaming, conscious only of my anxiety for you, so that it seemed
natural that everything should concern you. I remember nothing of my
dream but the words which, when I came to myself in the peristyle,
alone, were as clear in my memory as they are now:--

"'Watch the hand and read the eyes;
On his breast the danger lies--
Strength is weak and childhood wise.

"'Fail the bowl, and--'ware the knife!
Rests