could master, and I had always held it in hearty English scorn. Yet now
I was eager enough to speak it with her, and to take as my very own the
little cry of joy wherewith she welcomed my hesitant mouthing of it.

From that we fell to talking in her mother's tongue of the hardships of
those same Huguenot _émigrés_; and when I looked not at her I could
speak in terms dispassionate and cool of this or aught else; and when I
looked upon her my heart beat faster and my blood leaped quickly, and I
knew not always what it was I said.

After a time--'twas when Darius fetched me my supper and the
candles--she went away; and so ended a day which saw the beginning of a
struggle fiercer than any the turbaned Turk had ever given me. For when
I had eaten, and was alone with time to think, I knew well that I loved
this woman and should always love her; this in spite of honor, or
loyalty to Richard Jennifer, or any other thing in heaven or earth.




V

HOW I LOST WHAT I HAD NEVER GAINED


Though I dared not hope she would keep her promise and was sometimes so
sorely beset as to tremble at her coming, Margery looked in upon me
oftener, and soon there grew up between us a comradeship the like of
which, I think, had never been between a woman loved and a man who,
loving her, was yet constrained to play the part of her true lover's