“No, I do not know what is ahead,” she told him, “but I am free—­free for whatever will come.”

The brightness of that freedom shone suddenly from her upturned face.

“Anything is better than that man,” she vowed.  “Even if my aunt, that Madame Delcasse, should not like me—­you see, I have thought of everything, and I am not afraid.”

“Like you—?  She’ll love you,” said Ryder bitterly.  “She’ll go mad over you and give you all she has—­she’ll marry you to a count—­”

“Another marriage?” Aimee raised brows of mockery.  “But I am through with the marriages of convenience—­”

“You’re so lovely, darling, that you’ll have the world at your feet,” said the young man huskily.

He looked at her with eyes that could not hide their pain.  “Oh, I—­you—­it’s not fair—­” he muttered incoherently.

He had meant—­ever since that sobering moment of guardianship in the desert—­to be very fair.  He would not bind her with a word, a touch.  Not since that impulsive clasp of reunion in the palace had he touched her in caress.  With the reverence of his deep tenderness he had served her in the tomb, meaning to deny his heart, to delay its revelation, to wait upon her freedom and her youth....

Nobly he had resolved....  But now parting was upon him.

“It’s not fair to you,” he said desperately—­and drew closer.

For at his blurted words her look had magically changed.  The defensive lightness was fled.  A breathless wonder shone out at him ... a delicious shyness brushed with dancing expectation like the gleam of a butterfly’s wing.

No glamorous moonlight was about them now.  No scented shadowy garden....  But the enchantment was there, in the bare and dusty room, with its grim old mummy cases, the enchantment and the very flame of youth.

“Sweet, I’ll be on the ship—­I’ll wait till you are ready,” he vowed and at her low murmur, “Ready—?” he gave back, “Ready—­for love,” with a boy’s stammer over the first sound of that word between them.

“But what is this now,” she said wondering, yet with a little elfish gleam of laughter, “but—­love?”

His last resolve went to the winds.

And as his arms closed about her, as he held to his heart all that young loveliness that had been his despair and his delight, there was more than joy in the confused tumult of his youth, there was the supreme exultation of triumphant daring.

For he had opened the forbidden door; he had challenged the adventure and overcome the risk.

He had won.  And he would hold his winnings.

“Aimee,” he whispered.  “Aimee—­Beloved.”