She listens rapt, as she always listens to each word and tone of the beloved voice, and she fully realises the intense misery of the situation. Never to speak to Carl, never to see Carl, never to kiss Carl again! Her cheek grows whiter, her spirit sinks, her courage to do right dies an ignominious death; and a lump rises up in her throat, and then seems to fall back on her heart like a great cold stone. “Well, Zai?” he cries, not understanding her silence. “Of course you think as I do, my darling! You know it would kill us to part. Oh, Zai, you cannot surely be hesitating, you cannot be thinking of letting aught come between us two! You _must_ feel that death would be better than separation!” “Yes!” she whispers, and now, under the moonbeams, he sees a lovely pink colour steal over her face, and the sweetest, tenderest lovelight fill her big grey eyes. “Death would be a thousand times better, I could not live without you, Carl! I suppose it would be very wrong for us to go away, but it would be impossible to stay!” “Of course it would, my child,” he says quietly, as if assured of the fact. “If we could wait till I am twenty-one, Carl, perhaps----” “No, no!” he interrupts imperiously. “Why, Zai, you can’t know how I love you--how you are life of my life--or you would not _dare_ to suggest such a thing. Two whole long, never-ending, wretched years of feverish anxiety and jealousy and longing. They would drive me clean mad! If you love me as I love you, you would not pause. You would have but one wish, one thought--one resolve in your heart--to bind yourself to me by a chain that no man could break, or woman either,” he adds, thinking of Lady Beranger; “but you don’t love me as I love you!” The wish, the thought, the resolve are in her heart of hearts now. She looks up at his handsome face, meets the fervour in his brown eyes, and her pretty white arms, bare almost to the shoulder and with ropes of pearls glistening on them, steal round his neck, and her red lips plead wistfully. “Not love you as you love me, Carl!” she says, with her sweet mouth twitching like a child’s. Venus Victrix--as is always the case. If she had said she hated him, and yet looked as beautiful as she does, he would probably have adored her all the same, but now the clinging clasp, the loving grey eyes, the tremulous lips, and, above all, the abandon that love lends her, conquers completely, and the big strong man is the veriest baby, malleable as wax, in the circle of these dimpled arms and within earshot of the throb of his love’s true heart. “My own, my sweet!” he cries, stooping and kissing her from brow to chin. “I know you will come when I bid you, my Zai!” “When you bid me, Carl,” she says, her head against his shoulder, her eyes fixed on his face.