"Say it," she said, "oh, even if it be not true--say it! It would be such a good lie. It would comfort a torn heart, made ever to do the thing it hates. If I had been a fisher-girl spreading nets on the sands, a shepherdess on the hills, some brown sailor-lad or a bearded shepherd would have loved me for myself. Children would have played about my door. Like other women, I would have had the sweet bitterness of life on my lips. I would have sorrowed as others, rejoiced as others. And, when all was done, turned my face to the wall and died as others, my children about me, my man's hand in mine. But now--now--I am only poor Valentine la Niña, the tool of the League, the plaything of politics, the lure of the Jesuits, a thing to be used when bright, thrown away when rusted, but loved--never! No, not even by those who use me, and, in using, kill me!" And the Abbé John, moved at sight of the pain, answered as best he might. "A man can only love as the love comes to him," he murmured. "What might have been, I do not know. I have thought I loved many, but I never knew that I loved till I saw little Claire Agnew." "But if you had not--tell me," she sobbed; "I will be content, if you will only tell me." "I do not know," said John d'Albret, driven into a corner; "perhaps I might--if I had seen you first." To the young man it seemed an easy thing to say--a necessary thing, indeed. For, coming fresh from the fear and the place of torment, he was glad to say anything not to be sent thither again. "But say it," she cried, coming nearer and clasping his arm hard, "say it all--not that you might, but that you would--with the same love that goes easily to death, that I--I--I might escape. Oh, for me, I would go to a thousand deaths if only I knew--surely--surely, that one man in the world would do as much for me!" But the Abbé John had reached his limit. Not even to escape the Place of the Eyes could he deny his love, or affirm that he could ever have loved to the death any but his little Claire. "I saw her, and I loved!" he said simply--"that is all I know. Had I seen you, I might have loved--that also I do not know. More I cannot say. But be assured that, if I had loved you, not knowing the other, I should have counted, for your sake, my poor life but as a leaf, wind-blown, a petal fallen in the way." Valentine la Niña nervously crumpled the glorious red and fleshy blossoms of the pomegranate clusters in her fingers, till they fell in blood-drops on the floor.