"Will you promise to fly--to leave the city now, before suspicions are awakened which may make flight impossible?"
"My first and my only love, I would die to fulfil your slightest wish. But this thing I cannot do."
"And wherefore not, Señor Don Juan?"
"Can you ask? I must hazard everything, spend everything, in the chance--if there be a chance--of saving him, or, at least, of softening his fate."
"Then God help us both," said Doña Beatriz.
"Amen! Pray to him day and night, señora. Perhaps he may have pity on us."
"There is no chance of saving Don Carlos. Know you not that of all the prisoners the Holy House receives, scarce one in a thousand goes forth again to take his place in the world?"
Juan shook his head. He knew well that his task was almost hopeless; yet, even by Doña Beatriz, he was not to be moved from his determination.
But he thanked her in strong, passionate words for her faith in him and her truth to him. "No sorrow can divide us, my beloved," he said, "nor even what they call shame, falsely as they speak therein. You are my star, that shines on me throughout the darkness."
"I have promised."