At last, Mary, drying her eyes, arose, tottering, from her seat.
“And so I have come in vain! Once before I humbled myself in the dust before you—and you spurned me—”
The captain shook his head wearily.
“Yes, spurned me, and in the presence of others; so that even that poor dying man found it in his heart to pity me. And you, too, are dying, yet have not the mercy of a stranger and an enemy. You bade me read Homer, and taught me to admire Achilles, yet even his flinty heart was melted by the tears of Priam.”
The adamantine lips trembled.
“I have read the passage again and again, and wondered how you, as brave in battle, could be so much more pitiless than he. And Priam was a man, I a woman; Priam was his enemy, while I—”
A slight tremor shook his frame.
“At least, I am not that!”
She bowed her head for a moment; then, lifting her clasped hands and impassioned and despairing eyes to heaven:
“Merciful Father, have I not suffered enough! Must it be that from this time forth I shall know no peace,—haunted forever by the cold glitter of those implacable eyes, that were once—”