He approached and listened. Each moment added to his excitement, his fears, his hopes, but at last he opened the door on the left. The room was empty; there was the same disorder as before; the same signs of hurried flight. It was the room on the right! His heart almost stopped its beating as he placed his hand on the latch, lifted it, and pushed the door in. Kneeling beside the bed he saw a woman. She had turned toward the light and in the dim illumination of the room Nathaniel recognized the beautiful face he had seen at the king's castle the preceding day—the face of the woman who had sent him to find the prophet, who had placed her gentle hand on Marion's head as he had looked through the window. There was no fear in her eyes as she saw Nathaniel. Something more terrible than that shone in their glorious depths as she rose to her feet and stood before him, her face lined with grief, her mouth twitching in agony. She stood with clenched hands, her bosom rising and falling in the passion of the storm within her; and she sobbed even as Nathaniel paused there, unmanned in this sudden presence of a distress greater than his own; sobbed in a choking, tearless way, waiting for him to speak.
"Forgive me," he spoke gently. "I have come—for—Marion." He felt that he had no reason to lie to this woman. His face betrayed his own anguish as he came nearer to her. "I want Marion," he repeated. "My God, won't you tell me—?"
She struggled to calm herself as he spoke the girl's name.
"Marion is not here," she said. She crushed his hands against her bosom and a softer look came into her eyes; her voice was low and sweet, as it had been the morning he asked for Strang. As she saw the despair deepening in the man's face a great pity swept over her and she stretched out her arms to him with an aching cry, "Marion is gone—gone—gone," she moaned, "and you must go, too! O, I know you love her—she told me that you loved her, as I love Strang, my king! We have both lost—lost—and you must go—as—I—shall—go!" She turned away from him with a cry so heart-breaking in its pain that Nathaniel felt himself trembling to the soul. In another instant she had faced him again, fighting back a strange calm into her face.
"I love Marion," she breathed softly. "I would help you—I would help her—if I could." For a moment her pale beautiful face was filled with a light that might have shone from the face of an angel, "Don't you understand?" she continued, scarcely above a whisper. "I have been Strang's one great love—his life—until Marion came into his heart. I have lost—you have lost—but mine is the more bitter because Marion loves you, and Strang—"
With a cry Nathaniel sprang to her side. The candle fell from his hand, sputtered on the floor, and left them in darkness.
"Marion loves me! You say that Marion loves me?"
The woman's voice came to him in a whisper filled with the sweetness of sympathy.
"She said so to-night—in this room. She told me that she loved you as she never thought that she could love a man in this world. O, my God, is that not a balm for your heart, if it is broken? And Strang—my Strang—has forgotten his love for me!"
Nathaniel reached out his arms. They found the woman and for a time he held her hands in his, while a great silence fell upon them. He could hear the sobbing of her breath and as her fingers tightened about his own his heart seemed bursting with its hatred of this man who called himself a prophet of God; a hatred that burned furiously even as his being throbbed with the wild joy of the words he had just heard.