If you stood against him he would not spare you--perhaps not; I fear he
would not, as far as I know him now. He can be terrible in wrath. I
think he would warn you; but two men face to face! and he suspecting that
you cross his path! Find some way of avoiding him. Do, I entreat you.
By your love of me! Oh! no blood. I do not want to lose you. I could
not bear it.'

'Would you regret me?' said he.

Her eyes fell on his, and the beauty of those great dark eyes made her
fondness for him legible. He caused her a spasm of anguish, foreknowing
him doomed. She thought that haply this devoted heart was predestined to
be the sacrifice which should bring her round to Alvan. She murmured
phrases of dissuasion until her hollow voice broke; she wept for being
speechless, and turned upon Providence and her parents, in railing at
whom a voice of no ominous empty sound was given her; and still she felt
more warmly than railing expressed, only her voice shrank back from a
tone of feeling. She consoled herself with the reflection that utterance
was inadequate. Besides, her active good sense echoed Marko ringingly
when he cited the usages of their world and the impossibility of his
withdrawing or wishing to withdraw from the line of a challenge accepted.
It was destiny. She bowed her head lower and lower, oppressed without
and within, unwilling to look at him. She did not look when he left her.

The silence of him encouraged her head to rise. She stared about: his
phantom seemed present, and for a time she beheld him both upright in
life and stretched in death. It could not be her fault that he should
die! it was the fatality. How strange it was! Providence, after
bitterly misusing her, offered this reparation through the death of