did! Then, seeing that I dwell not in Edmund Spenser's faerie-land nor
believe that an enchanter's wand may make white seem black and black
seem white, I now see myself nakedly as I am,--a man who knew not
himself; a sword, jewel--hilted, with a blade of lath; a gay masker
whom, his vizard torn away, the servants thrust forth into the cold! I
am my own assassin, forger, abhorred fool!"

He paused, and the embers fell, growing gray in the silence. At last he
spoke again, in a changed voice. "Thy brother, lady.... There will not
lack those to tell thee that I tripped him with my foot, that I slew him
with my dagger. It is not true, and yet I count myself his murderer....
See the shadow at thy feet, the heavy shadow that lies between you and
me!... How may I say that I would have given my life for him who was thy
brother and my charge, whom for his own sake I loved, when I gave not my
life, when I bought my life with his and many another's?... Thou dost
well to say no word, but I would that thou didst not press thy hands
against thy heart, nor look at me with those eyes. A little longer and I
will let thee go, and Sidney's sister will comfort thee and be kind
to thee."

"What else?" said Damaris, beneath her breath. "What else? O God! no
more!"

Ferne drew from his doublet a knot of soiled ribbon. Again he was
speaking, but not with the voice he had used before. "Thy favor.... I
have brought it back to thee--but not stainless, not worn in triumph....
There is a fortress and a town that I see sometimes in a dream, and the
governor of them both is a nobleman of Spain--Don Luiz de Guardiola,
Governor of Nueva Cordoba. He filched from me my honor, but left me life
that I might taste death in life. He set me on the river sands that I