Do let me ask them ?" He laid his hand on her shoulder; his voice, as he answered, was hoarse and unsteady.
"No; go, dear.

You will please me best by leaving me.

Ask none--tell none; I can trust you to be silent, Petite Reine." She gave him a long, earnest look.
"Yes," she answered simply and gravely, as one who accepts, and not lightly, a trust.
Then she went slowly and lingeringly, with the sun on the gold fillet binding her hair, but the tears heavy on the shadow of her silken lashes.

When next they met again the luster of a warmer sun, that once burned on the white walls of the palace of Phoenicia and the leaping flame of the Temple of the God of Healing, shone upon them; and through the veil of those sweeping lashes there gazed the resistless sovereignty of a proud and patrician womanhood.
Alone, his head sank down upon his hands; he gave reins to the fiery scorn, the acute suffering which turn by turn seized him with every moment that seared the words of the letter deeper and deeper down into his brain.

Until this he had never known what it was to suffer; until this his languid creeds had held that no wise man feels strongly, and that to glide through life untroubled and unmoved is as possible as it is politic.