At that all Maria Vittoria’s vehemence left her.  She fell to beseechings and entreaties.  With her vehemence went also her dignity.  She dropped upon her knees and dragged herself across the room to him.  To James her humility was more terrible than her passion, for passion had always distinguished her, and he was familiar with it; but pride had always gone hand in hand with it.  He stepped forward and would have raised her from the ground, but Maria would have none of his help; she crouched at his feet pleading.

“You told me business would call you to Spain.  Go there!  Stay there!  For a little—­oh, not for long!  But for a month, say, after your Princess comes triumphing into Bologna.  Promise me that!  I could not bear that you should meet her as she comes.  There would be shouts; I can hear them.  No, I will not have it!  I can see her proud cursed face a-flush.  No!  You think too much of what she has suffered.  If I could have suffered too!  But suffering, shame, humiliation, these fall to women, always have fallen.  We have learnt to bear them so that we feel them less than you.  My dear lord, believe me!  Her suffering is no great thing.  If we love we welcome it!  Each throb of pain endured for love becomes a thrill of joy.  If I could have suffered too!”

It was strange to hear this girl with the streaming eyes and tormented face bewail her fate in that she had not won that great privilege of suffering.  She knelt on the ground a splendid image of pain, and longed for pain that she might prove thereby how little a thing she made of it.  The Chevalier drew a stool to her side and seating himself upon it clasped her about the waist.  She laid her cheek upon his knee just as a dog will do.

“Sweetheart,” said he, “I would have no woman suffer a pang for me had I my will of the world.  But since that may not be, I do not believe that any woman could be deeper hurt than you are now.”

“Not Clementina?”

“No.”

Maria uttered a little sigh.  Her pain gave her a sort of ownership of the man who caused it.  “Nor can she love as deep,” she continued quietly.  “A Sobieski from the snows!  Love was born here in Italy.  She robs me of you.  I hate her.”  Then she raised her face eagerly.  “Charles Wogan may fail.”

“You do not know him.”

“The cleverest have made mistakes and died for them.”

“Wogan makes mistakes like another, but somehow gets the better of them in the end.  There was a word he said to me when he begged for my permission.  I told him his plan was a mere dream.  He answered he would dream it true; he will.”

“You should have waked him.  You were the master, he the servant.  You were the King.”

“And when can the King do what he wills instead of what he must?  Maria, if you and I had met before I sent Charles Wogan to search out a wife for me—­”

Maria Vittoria knelt up.  She drew herself away.