"I know how you have suffered. It is only a little while that I have known, but it seems long, very long. I have seen his portrait, and partly I came up to tell you this morning that I believe in his innocence; partly that, but most of all I came to say that he must be saved."
"Saved?" echoed Madeleine Dalahaide. "But that is not possible. Only death can save him now."
Neither had uttered a name; neither was aware that it had not been spoken by the other. For Madeleine always, for Virginia in this hour, one name rang through the world. There was no need to give it form. And, strangely, Madeleine was no longer surprised at Virginia's mission. Perhaps, indeed, she believed her an incarnate answer to prayer; and in a moment all conventionalities had crumbled to pieces at their feet.
"Why do you say that?" cried the American girl. "Prisoners are released sometimes."
"Not life-prisoners at Noumea," replied the other; and the answer fell desolately on Virginia's ear. Yet the thought, lit into life by her own words, as a flame is lighted by striking a match, had given her courage which would not die.
"Then he will be the first," she said. "I have been thinking. Oh! it has all been very vague—a kind of dream. But now I see everything clearly. Time unravels mysteries not easily solved at first. His innocence must be proved. Powerful friends shall give all their thoughts, all their ingenuity——"
"We have no friends," Madeleine answered bitterly.
"You have one friend. You have me."
Then at last a sense of the strangeness of this scene rushed in a wave over the consciousness of the lonely dweller in the castle.
"I don't understand," she said slowly. "Yesterday we had never met. I only knew your name because you spoke of buying this poor, sad home of mine. I——"