“You seem to be aware of some motive for your commandant’s dislike?” she asked him.  “Tell me to what you attribute it?”

“It is a long tale, madame.”

“No matter; I would hear it.”

“I fear it would only weary you.”

“Do not fear that.  Tell it me.”

He obeyed, and told to her the story of the Emir and of the Pearl of the Desert; and Venetia Corona listened, as she had listened to him throughout, with an interest that she rarely vouchsafed to the recitals and the witticisms of her own circle.  He gave to the narrative a soldierly simplicity and a picturesque coloring that lent a new interest to her; and she was of that nature which, however, it may be led to conceal feeling from pride and from hatred, never fails to awaken to indignant sympathy at wrong.

“This barbarian is your chief!” she said, as the tale closed.  “His enmity is your honor!  I can well credit that he will never pardon your having stood between him and his crime.”

“He has never pardoned it yet, of a surety.”

“I will not tell you it was a noble action,” she said, with a smile sweet as the morning—­a smile that few saw light on them.  “It came too naturally to a man of honor for you to care for the epithet.  Yet it was a great one, a most generous one.  But I have not heard one thing:  what argument did you use to obtain her release?”

“No one has ever heard it,” he answered her, while his voice sank low.  “I will trust you with it; it will not pass elsewhere.  I told him enough of—­of my own past life to show him that I knew what his had been, and that I knew, moreover, though they were dead to me now, men in that greater world of Europe who would believe my statement if I wrote them this outrage on the Emir, and would avenge it for the reputation of the Empire.  And unless he released the Emir’s wife, I swore to him that I would so write, though he had me shot on the morrow; and he knew I should keep my word.”

She was silent some moments, looking on him with a musing gaze, in which some pity and more honor for him were blended.

“You told him your past.  Will you confess it to me?”

“I cannot, madame.”

“And why?”

“Because I am dead!  Because, in your presence, it becomes more bitter to me to remember that I ever lived.”

“You speak strangely.  Cannot your life have a resurrection?”

“Never, madame.  For a brief hour you have given it one—­in dreams.  It will have no other.”

“But surely there may be ways—­such a story as you have told me brought to the Emperor’s knowledge, you would see your enemy disgraced, yourself honored?”

“Possibly, madame.  But it is out of the question that it should ever be so brought.  As I am now, so I desire to live and die.”

“You voluntarily condemn yourself to this?”

“I have voluntarily chosen it.  I am well sure that the silence I entreat will be kept by you?”