"I must, my dear Lord; more than anything should I have been glad to die in Ruggiero's place if you had known that I had died for you: nay, whether you knew it or no. We Sicilians are afraid of pain, but not of death; and if I had died for you, and you had known it, perhaps you would have kissed my dead lips." "I have kissed Ruggiero," said the Admiral, almost involuntarily. Whereat she fell to kissing his hand--a fountain of passionate kisses. Then she rose and laid her hands upon his shoulders and looked into his soul; and he, knowing that his soul was as crystal to her, did not flinch, but rather stood up, and she said to him:-- "My Lord, hear the prayer of a woman, a prayer she has often prayed to Heaven, a prayer for which she had absolution the day that you were in the Queen's chapel...." He made a slight movement. "Nay, stay and hear me out: hear of a woman's will, oft challenged by herself, but steadfast. Desperate have I been to give myself to you. I have thought and fought and prayed how to find a way to conquer myself." "Dear Princess, why not marry? Marry Will: you can see how the boy is eating his heart out for you." "No," she answered, quite simply; "I love him much; I could not be untrue to him." The Admiral hung his head as if _he_ had said the shameful thing. But she was not ashamed. She continued: "But now, since poor Ruggiero is dead, there is no need. I am the last of my House. There is no one to be hurt by me." Something seemed to flash across her as she added: "My uncle is very old, and at Syracuse they hear nothing. So you see," she said, mistaking his silence, "there is nothing to part us." He disengaged himself from her gently. "Rusidda," he said, letting those large sensitive lips meet reverently on her forehead, "this is the haven of those who have made mistakes--not for the young with all their life before them. I have enough to blame myself for----" Even as he spoke, My Lady, who had sent to the city for her proper habiliments, passed up the steps and stood before them. "Poor child!" she said. She was full of womanly sympathy: no woman I ever knew could rise to such a glory of sympathy and imagination and generosity at such a moment. She led her away. It was My Lady who wept over the death of the knightly Ruggiero and the hopelessness of Rusidda's passion. We watched them pass down the steps, and out of sight among the ilexes, and the Admiral, very sorrowful, pass by the steps from the far end of the terrace; and then I, too, crept from the belvedere, in which I had been an imprisoned spectator, and left Will with his head buried in his arms.