Dolores’ timidity left her at the suggestion. “I am sure Your Lowness had nothing to do with--with that night. Otherwise it would not seem so wrong to tell it here--such an injustice to John. The fault was not his. It was mine--all mine. I did what he implored me not to do. I urged myself upon him beyond his strength. The only excuse for me is that, with all I had known of mortal man, I really did not understand. And he--he had felt so safe in his sorrow.” Half-rising, she clutched the table for support and gazed along the double file of spectral faces. The leer on the lips of him nicknamed Old Original aroused her to further defense. “Perhaps our mateship was not meant to be gainsaid. Perhaps the races of the mortal world would be worthier their fair lands if right were not made wrong by mortal laws--if only the Maker whom John questioned need be obeyed. Perhaps He meant that the crave to be satisfied of all true love should compensate for His inexorable law that man must die.” At the shriek of derision that greeted her thought, she lifted her head and eyes in a transport of humble defiance. “Whatever the perhaps and perhaps, I do not regret. The proof of what I felt for John I never shall regret. If I did wrong it was in caring for him and that I could not help. Love’s first and best impulse is to bestow. I knew that I belonged to him and I wanted him to know. I am glad--_glad_ that I told him. The way I gave the knowledge was called a crime--the only crime on earth not judged by motive and circumstance. Surely on that Day when justice becomes absolute, I shall not be blamed. What is a whispered confession, a lingering kiss, an abandoned embrace, to be quibbled over by Him said to have made us and all that we are from the impulse of love divine? Did not He Himself decree that love must be served?” “She-fiend, you overstep yourself!” The lash of His Majesty’s voice convinced the girl-soul. Whipped by it back into her chair, she awaited the chastisement which probably would follow her regardlessness of rules. Thoughts of the Wantons’ Well and the Ward for Bastard Babes subdued her small access of courage in the dread which had come with her from Earth to Shadow Land. She closed her eyes; ceased to breathe; expected. The pause seemed long; was long. When finally the Rex of Reversals spoke, his humorous tone and diction made her realize that until then she had expected clemency. “Hard to beat, this faith of fools! At least, the Great Judge of whom you hope a reprieve from the fiat of your world hasn’t any corner on tolerance. Although love is a puny motive, I excuse a lot of it for sake of the passion it begets. Young woman, your story interests me. Since so large an audience has disconcerted you, suppose you finish it to sympathetic me alone. It is hate divine that must be served and you who must serve it.”