The girl was in a frenzy of passion and love and hate all together, and did not count her words.  The white heat of her tormented soul blazed from her pale face and illuminated every feature, though she was turned from the light, and she shook my arm in her grasp so that it pained me.  The marble was burnt in the fire, and must consume itself to ashes.  The white and calm statue was become a pillar of flame in the life-and-death struggle for love.  I strove to speak, but could not, for fear and wonder tied my tongue.  And indeed she gave me short time to think.

“I tell you I love him, as he loves me,” she continued, her voice trembling upon the rising cadence, “with all my whole being.  Tell him so.  Tell him he must save me, and that only he can:  that for his sake I am tortured, and scorned, and disgraced, and sold; my body thrown to dogs, and worse than dogs; my soul given over to devils that tempt me to kill and be free,—­by my own father, for his sake.  Tell him that these hands he kissed are wasted with wringing small pains from each other, but the greater pain drives them to do worse.  Tell him, good sir,—­you are kind and love him, but not as I do,—­tell him that this golden hair of mine has streaks of white in these terrible two months; that these eyes he loved are worn with weeping.  Tell him—­”

But her voice failed her, and she staggered against the wall, hiding her face in her hands.  A trembling breath, a struggle, a great wild sob:  the long-sealed tears were free, and flowed fast over her hands.

“Oh, no, no,” she moaned, “you must not tell him that.”  Then choking down her agony she turned to me:  “You will not—­you cannot tell him of this?  I am weak, ill, but I will bear everything for—­for him.”  The great effort exhausted her, and I think that if I had not caught her she would have fallen, and she would have hurt herself very much on the stone floor.  But she is young, and I am not very strong, and could not have held her up.  So I knelt, letting her weight come on my shoulder.

The fair head rested pathetically against my old coat, and I tried to wipe away her tears with her long golden hair; for I had not any handkerchief.  But very soon I could not see to do it.  I was crying myself, for the pity of it all, and my tears trickled down and fell on her thin hands.  And so I kneeled, and she half lay and half sat upon the floor, with her head resting on my shoulder; I was glad then to be old, for I felt that I had a right to comfort her.

Presently she looked up into my face, and saw that I was weeping.  She did not speak, but found her little lace handkerchief, and pressed it to my eyes,—­first to one, and then to the other; and the action brought a faint maidenly flush to her cheeks through all her own sorrow.  A daughter could not have done it more kindly.

“My child,” I said at last, “be sure that your secret is safe in me.  But there is one coming with whom it will be safer.”