"God forgive me! I have done that! I had to do that, or--" "And is it too late--to undo it ?" "It is too late." A sob choked her voice.
Tears--tears incredible, unnatural--welled from under Count Hannibal's closed eyelids, and rolled sluggishly down his harsh cheek to the edge of his beard.
"I would have gone," he muttered.

"If you had spoken, I would have spared you this." "I know," she answered unsteadily; "the men told me." "And yet--" "It was just.

And you are my husband," she replied.

"More, I am the captive of your sword, and as you spared me in your strength, my lord, I spared you in your weakness." "Mon Dieu! Mon Dieu, Madame!" he cried, "at what a cost!" And that arrested, that touched her in the depths of her grief and her horror; even while the gibbet on the causeway, which had burned itself into her eyeballs, hung before her.

For she knew that it was the cost to _her_ he was counting.