“Yet, why should I say we are doomed?” he went on, under his breath. “Why should not this house be as the ark of refuge? Diana,”—the dreadful joy broke out again in eye and accent,—“have you understood how it stands with us? There is no help for it; we are shut in together. Heaven itself has sealed the way that would divide us—” * * * * * So, it had come! That moment she had dreamt of, with a fierce abandonment to his ecstasy; that moment, the very thought of which she had prayed against with tears, as if the mere passage of its forbidden sweetness through her heart were a sin! It had come, in this bitterness, this shame, this shattering of the ideal she held so high! She moved from him without a word, let herself drop mechanically into the King’s chair, and sat, her hands clasping the carven arms, staring straight before her. Rockhurst fell on his knees beside her. “Diana, Diana—I love you!—And ah, Diana, you love me—” She flung out her hands to push him from her, and all her wounded heart spoke in her cry:— “Do not say it, my lord! Oh, I have so dreaded to hear you say it!” But her very pain was triumph in his ears. As masterfully as he caught and imprisoned her hands once again, so did his passion seize and crush her woman’s scruples:— “We are alone in a dying world! Who knows if we shall see another dawn! Shall we not take the day that is given us, make use of life while life is still ours?” And while she looked at him, speechless, her eyes dark in the sorrowful pallor of her face, he cried in a tone that pierced to her very marrow:— “Diana—come to my arms and teach me, let me teach thee, how sweet life can be … how sweet death can be!” She had ceased to struggle against him. Her hands lay inert in his. He put his arm about her then; and, motionless, she submitted. But the tears slowly, slowly welled to her piteous eyes. Then he drew back from her, rose and stood again, gazing at her; the exultation, the fires of ecstasy, fading from his face, and something hard, ruthless, taking their place. “I can get a priest to wed us, in Whitehall, ere the day be an hour older,” he said, frowning upon her. Through the tears she would not shed, her great eyes dilated upon him. “And what will you say—what shall we say—to your son, my lord?” Rockhurst started as if he had been struck. A masterful man, who all his life had dominated others, he bent his brows with a terrible resentment on her who dared thwart him at this supreme hour of his will; dared lift against him the one weapon that could pierce his armour. “You took the trust, my lord, even as I yielded my troth.…” His anger broke forth, the more ruthlessly that he was, for the first time in his life, perhaps, abandoning himself to an unworthy part, a part of weakness. Broken phrases escaped his lips, contradictions lost in the irresistible logic of passion.