“And you failed because she was the Princess of Favara and you only a lieutenant in His Majesty’s Navy?”
“Nay, not that, Kitty. Rusidda loved me more than a brother, and loved that I should love her; let me be with her and caress her as much as I would; prayed that I might make her love me enough to marry me,—to marry me would have been to conquer herself.”
“Why, then, did she not marry you? All the love in life would have come afterwards.”
“Can you not see, Kitty, that there was another, whom she could not marry, and that it was from this passion that she sought to save herself?”
“And could you not save her, Will?” asked Katherine, with a lump in her throat, and wondering how a passionate woman could have resisted his suit.
He shook his head.
“And did she die of shame?”
“There was no shame—except my shame in having lived for her pure caresses. She killed herself for love.”
“What manner of man was he, this man, who took away her eyes for you, Will? Was he of mighty stature, or born to the mastery of women?”
“He was a little plain man, with one eye and one arm, who was born to the mastery of every man or woman who ever came under his magic influence.”