“There is but one way to win his forgiveness,” she cried breathlessly. “He will pity me then... his heart will soften... he will remember what I said on that strange happy night when once again we met... I am but a woman who loves. Earth holds no weaker thing... and I loved you, Julian... you only—you alone! always—always—always. Men live for love—a woman can but die. For the life I took I give my own—it is just... Yet if but once, oh, beloved, I could see your pitying eyes, and hear your tender voice... and know that you—forgave...”
The light faded from her face once more. Only a hunted, despairing creature leaned back on that solitary couch.
A voice came shrilly from the outer room: “Are you all right, Princess? Can you really bear that heat?”
Monotonously—vaguely—her own voice replied: “I am all right—I do not even feel the heat.”
Then, all again grew still, and her eyes closed, and her heart beat in a dull, laboured way.
Once more the shrill voice reached her; but it sounded far off, and indistinct: “I hope you won’t go off to sleep, like you did the last time, Princess; you frightened me terribly.”
The effort to reply was harder to make; yet once again the slow, sweet voice vibrated through the hushed and stifling heat:
“I shall not sleep—do not be alarmed.”
Five minutes later, when Mrs Ray Jefferson lifted her eyes from an examination of her suffering foot, she was surprised to see the Princess standing in the archway of the further room, exactly as she had done on the first occasion of her visiting the Baths.
“Are you going?” she called out. “How is it I never saw you pass through the room?”