They were alone in one of the royal apartments; their companions had passed, in advance of them, into the adjoining room. Benyon and his fellow-visitor had paused beneath one of the immense chandeliers of glass, which in the clear, colored gloom (through it one felt the strong outer light of Italy beating in) suspended its twinkling drops from the decorated vault. They looked round them confusedly, made shy for the moment by Benyon’s having struck a note more serious than any that had hitherto souuded between them, looked at the sparse furniture, draped in white overalls, at the scagiiola floor, in which the great cluster of crystal pendants seemed to shine again. “You are master of your ship. Can’t you sail it as you like?” Kate Theory asked, with a smile. “I am not master of anything. There is not a man in the world less free. I am a slave. I am a victim.” She looked at him with kind eyes; something in his voice suddenly made her put away all thought of the defensive airs that a girl, in certain situations, is expected to assume. She perceived that he wanted to make her understand something, and now her only wish was to help him to say it. “You are not happy,” she murmured, simply, her voice dying away in a kind of wonderment at this reality. The gentle touch of the words--it was as if her hand had stroked his cheek--seemed to him the sweetest thing he had ever known. “No, I am not happy, because I am not free. If I were--if I were, I would give up my ship. I would give up everything, to follow you. I can’t explain; that is part of the hardness of it. I only want you to know it,--that if certain things were different, if everything was different, I might tell you that I believe I should have a right to speak to you. Perhaps some day it will change; but probably then it will be too late. Meanwhile, I have no right of any kind. I don’t want to trouble you, and I don’t ask of you--anything! It is only to have spoken just once. I don’t make you understand, of course. I am afraid I seem to you rather a brute,--perhaps even a humbug. Don’t think of it now,--don’t try to understand. But some day, in the future, remember what I have said to you, and how we stood here, in this strange old place, alone! Perhaps it will give you a little pleasure.” Kate Theory began by listening to him with visible eagerness; but in a moment she turned away her eyes. “I am very sorry for you,” she said, gravely. “Then you do understand enough?” “I shall think of what you have said, in the future.” Benyon’s lips formed the beginning of a word of tenderness, which he instantly suppressed; and in a different tone, with a bitter smile and a sad shake of the head, raising his arms a moment and letting them fall, he said: “It won’t hurt any one, your remembering this!”