He started from her side as he heard, and paced to and fro the narrow limits of the tent like a caged animal.  For the first time it grew a belief to him, in his thoughts, that were he free, were he owner of his heritage, he could rouse her heart from its long repose and make her love him with the soft and passionate warmth of his dead Arab mistress—­a thing that had been so distant from her negligence and her pride as warmth from the diamond or the crystal.  He felt as if the struggle would kill him.  He had but to betray his brother, and he would be unchained from his torture; he had but to break his word, and he would be at liberty.  All the temptation that had before beset him paled and grew as naught beside this possibility of the possession of her love which dawned upon him now.

She, knowing nothing of this which moved him, believed only that he weighed her words in hesitation, and strove to turn the balance.

“Hear me,” she said softly.  “I do not bid you decide; I only bid you confide in Philip—­in one who, as you must well remember, would sooner cut off his own hand than counsel a base thing or do an unfaithful act.  You are guiltless of this charge under which you left England; you endure it rather than do what you deem dishonorable to clear yourself.  That is noble—­that is great.  But it is possible, as I say, that you may exaggerate the abnegation required of you.  Whoever was the criminal should suffer.  Yours is magnificent magnanimity; but it may surely be also false justice alike to yourself and the world.”

He turned on her almost fiercely in the suffering she dealt him.

“It is!  It was a madness—­a Quixotism—­the wild, unconsidered act of a fool.  What you will!  But it is done; it was done forever—­so long ago—­when your young eyes looked on me in the pity of your innocent childhood.  I cannot redeem its folly now by adding to it baseness.  I cannot change the choice of a madman by repenting of it with a coward’s caprice.  Ah, God! you do not know what you do—­how you tempt.  For pity’s sake, urge me no more.  Help me—­strengthen me—­to be true to my word.  Do not bid me do evil that I may enter paradise through my sin!”

He threw himself down beside her as the incoherent words poured out, his arms flung across the pile of cushions on which he had been seated, his face hidden on them.  His teeth clinched on his tongue till the blood flowed; he felt that if the power of speech remained with him he should forswear every law that had bound him to silence, and tell her all, whatever the cost.

She looked at him, she heard him, moved to a greater agitation than ever had had sway over her; for the first time the storm winds that swept by her did not leave her passionless and calm; this man’s whole future was in her hands.  She could bid him seek happiness dishonored; or cleave to honor, and accept wretchedness forever.

It was a fearful choice to hold.