"I wrote you a letter the other night," he continued, speaking quickly and harshly, "after the ball. Did you receive it?" "Yes." "And read it?" "Of course." "And is it because of it that your love for me has gone?" He had not meant to put his horrible suspicions into words. The very fact--now that he had spoken--appeared more tangible, even irremediable. She did not reply to his taunt, and he came a little closer to her and took her hand, and when she tried to withdraw it from his grasp he held it tightly and bent down his head so that in the gathering gloom he could read every line of her face. "Because of what I told you in my letter you despised me, did you not?" he asked. Again she made no reply. What could she say that would not hurt him far more than did her silence? The next moment he had drawn her back right into the shadow of the cathedral walls, into a dark angle, where no one could see either her or him. He placed his hands upon her shoulders and compelled her to look him straight in the face. "Listen, Crystal," he said slowly and with desperate earnestness. "Once, long ago, I gave you up to de Marmont, to affluence and to considerations of your name and of our caste. It all but broke my heart, but I did it because your father demanded that sacrifice from you and from me. I was ready then to stand aside and to give up all the dreams of my youth. . . . But now everything is different. For one thing, the events of the past hundred days have made every man many years older: the hell I went through to-day has helped to make a more sober, more determined man of me. Now I will not give you up. I will not. My way is clear: I can win you with your father's consent and give him and you all that de Marmont had promised. The King trusts me and will give me what I ask. I am no longer a wastrel, no longer poor and obscure. And I will not give you up--I swear it by all that I have gone through to-day. I will not! if I have to kill with my own hand every one who stands in my way." And Crystal, smiling, quite kindly and a little abstractedly at his impulsive earnestness, gently removed his hands from her shoulders and said calmly: "You are tired, Maurice, and overwrought. Shall we go in and wait for father? He will be getting anxious about me." And without waiting to see if he followed her, she turned to walk toward the steps.