On this she insisted much more than seemed just or reasonable.

It was for her sake, no doubt, that I had made the Regent of Elcavoo my bitter, irreconcilable foe.

It was my marriage with her, the daughter of the most eminent among the chiefs of the Zinta, that had marked me out as one of the first and principal victims, and set on my head a value as high as on that of any of the Order save the Arch-Enlightener himself, whose personal character and social distinction would have indicated him as especially dangerous, even had his secret rank been altogether unsuspected.

It was impossible to soothe Eveena's first outbreak of feeling, or reason with her illogical self-reproach.

Compelled at last to admit that the peril had been unconsciously incurred when she neither knew nor could have known it, she pleaded eagerly and earnestly for permission to repair by the sacrifice of herself the injury she had brought upon me.