So it seemed to this man, who only a few days before had not known what love was. But who now, stung with sudden passion, flung himself from wall to wall of his narrow prison. Now, when he saw it snatched from him, now, when he saw himself denuded of that solace at which he had grasped, but for which he had not been sufficiently thankful, now he learned what love was, its pains as well as its promise, its burning fevers, its heart-stabbing pity! He lost himself in rage. He who for years had practised himself in calmness, who had made it his aim to hide his heart, forgot his lesson, flung to the night his habit. He seized the iron bars of his window and shook them in a paroxysm of fury, as if only by violence he could retain his sanity. When the bars, which would have resisted the strength of ten, declined to leave the stone, he flung himself on the door, and beat on it and shouted, maddened by the thought that she was under the same roof, that she was within call, yet he could not help her! He called Vlaye by dreadful names, challenging him, and defying him, and promising him terrible deaths. And only when echo and silence answered all and the iron sense of his helplessness settled down slowly upon him and numbed his faculties did he, too, fall silent and, covering his face with his hands, stagger to a seat and sit in a stupor of despair. He had put love aside, he had despised it through years--for this! He had held it cheap when it promised to be his--for this! He had accepted it grudgingly, and when all else was like to fail him--for this! He was punished, and sorely. She was near him. He pictured her in the man's power, in the man's hands, in the man's arms! And he could not help her. Had his impotent cries and threats been heard they had only covered him with humiliation. Fortunately they were not heard: the merry-making was at its height, and no one came near him. The Captain of Vlaye, aware that his marriage could not be hidden from his own men--for he had made no secret of it beforehand--had not ventured to forbid some indulgence. He could make it known that the man who named his bride outside the gate would lose his tongue; but, that arranged, he must wink--for every despotism is tempered by something--at a few hours of riot, and affect not to see things that at another time had called for swift retribution.