She shook her head.
“Nay, she is mad to escape; she thinks of little else all day long. But what is the use of telling her till the time comes? The fewer in such a plot the better, and if anything goes wrong, it is well that she should be innocent, for then—”
“Then death, and farewell to all things,” said Godwin; “nor indeed should I grieve to say them good-bye. But, Masouda, you run great peril. Tell me now, honestly, why do you do this?”
As he spoke the lightning flashed and showed her face as she stood there against a background of green leaves and red lily flowers. There was a strange look upon it—a look that made Godwin feel afraid, he knew not of what.
“Why did I take you into my inn yonder in Beirut when you were the pilgrims Peter and John? Why did I find you the best horses in Syria and guide you to the Al-je-bal? Why did I often dare death by torment for you there? Why did I save the three of you? And why, for all this weary while, have I—who, after all, am nobly born—become the mock of soldiers and the tire-woman of the princess of Baalbec?
“Shall I answer?” she went on, laughing. “Doubtless in the beginning because I was the agent of Sinan, charged to betray such knights as you are into his hands, and afterwards because my heart was filled with pity and love for—the lady Rosamund.”
Again the lightning flashed, and this time that strange look had spread from Masouda’s face to the face of Godwin.
“Masouda,” he said in a whisper, “oh! think me no vain fool, but since it is best perhaps that both should know full surely, tell me, is it as I have sometimes—”
“Feared?” broke in Masouda with her little mocking laugh. “Sir Godwin, it is so. What does your faith teach—the faith in which I was bred, and lost, but that now is mine again—because it is yours? That men and women are free, or so some read it. Well, it or they are wrong. We are not free. Was I free when first I saw your eyes in Beirut, the eyes for which I had been watching all my life, and something came from you to me, and I—the cast-off plaything of Sinan—loved you, loved you, loved you—to my own doom? Yes, and rejoiced that it was so, and still rejoice that it is so, and would choose no other fate, because in that love I learned that there is a meaning in this life, and that there is an answer to it in lives to be, otherwhere if not here. Nay, speak not. I know your oath, nor would I tempt you to its breaking. But, Sir Godwin, a woman such as the lady Rosamund cannot love two men,” and as she spoke Masouda strove to search his face while the shaft went home.
But Godwin showed neither surprise nor pain.