"He will be stung to the heart—and yet, better one pang at once!" she said in her solitude. "What could it avail him to know me more except to suffer longer?"
Her resolve was not changed; vacillation was impossible to her; she had none of its weakness in her nature, but a regret poignant and almost remorseful was on her. She thought of the fearless fidelity with which he had refused ever again to become as a stranger to her, she thought of the fealty that she knew so well he bore to her, that had looked out from the ardent worship of his eyes in the calm of the eastern night a few short hours before.
And she was about to kill this at a blow, because the prayer of another had pierced her heart and pleaded with her to spare him. if it were not too late.
A new life had dawned on Erceldoune.
All his old habits of soldier-like decision, of sportsmanlike activity, were broken up; he who had used to find his greatest pleasures in the saddle and the rifle, in waiting high up in a leafy nest for the lions to come down to the spring to drink, and in riding wild races with Arabs over amber stretches
