Arising, he stepped from the dais, settled his crown a trifle more to one side and slicked his vandyke with meticulous care. He then approached the cowering figure on the steps. “It is unseemly that you should remain upon your knees, madam or miss, when many stand who probably are not half so bad as you. Allow me.” Stooping, he lifted her to her feet. She straightened to face him with a show of bravery. “I was misunderstood on Earth,” she said. “In this existence, I hope for justice.” “Fear not,” he assured her. “In Gehenna you shall receive justice, Dolores Trent, as meted by that world which has learned you to its sorrow and, it would seem, to your own.” “I’ll tell you--I swear to you, sir, that I have done no man willing wrong.” He greeted her protest with a punctilious laugh, as though over an attempt at wit. “Rich man, poor man, beggar man, thief----” “But you will not punish my baby for my faults?” A breeze of terror swung the cathedral bell. “Only look at her, sir. She is too tiny, you see, for the vaguest thought of wrong. To her, at least, be merciful.” “Oh, Hell, be merciful!” Satan mocked her. “That too-late wail has been dinned into my ears until it is a wonder that I can hear you at all. Cheer up. You won’t have to part from it--I beg its pardon--_her_. Have you not heard that a child conceived in sin must take his--its chances with her progenitors?” At the low, protesting cry which escaped the mother, he laid a hand on her shoulder, then allowed his arm to settle about her, as though measuring her height by his own. His touch appeared to repulse her. Shuddering, she passed the infant shade to the other arm and stood irresolute, evidently trying to decide how best she might release herself. A commotion at the door claimed the court’s attention. Through the light-striped hangings, slipping from the grip of the pygmies, two comely creatures seemed verily to float across the throne-room, a youth costumed as a knight and a guileless-looking maid. He, drawing her by the hand, pressed toward the group before the dais. Lithe of body and ardent of eye, he caught the arm of the King and sought to remove it from about the suppliant’s form. As the pursuing dwarfs seized him with their over-long reach, His Highness found himself looking down into the flower-face of the girl intruder--into eyes shy and fearless as violets at dawn. “And whom,” he enquired, “have we here?” The minister undertook to announce them. “A pair by the stagy names of Innocentia and Amor. They call themselves guardian spirits and have a talent, which few share with Your Excellency and myself, of absolute invisibility. They lined up in a most theatric way beside the wench Dolores outside the door. As they had no passports and did not seem to belong, I sent them back--or thought I did.”