"A pretence, do you think, to get myself a hearing--to beguile you into a little interest? That might have been. But it is more serious, far more serious. I told you it was life or death." He paused for a moment and then resumed. "Do you remember last year when you saved me?" "I remember--last year," she said with an unsteady voice, feeling the flush grow hotter and hotter on her cheek, for she did not desire to be reminded of that self-surrender, that strange merging of her being in another's which was her secret, of which she had been aware, but no one else. "I never understood it," she added, with one meaning for herself and one for him. The hidden sense was to her more important than the other. "It has always been--a mystery----" "It was the beginning of the struggle," he said. "I came here, you know--don't you know?--out of poverty to take possession of my kingdom--that was what I thought. I found myself instead at the beginning of a dreary battle. I was not fit for it, to begin with. Do you remember the old knights had to prepare themselves for their chivalry with fasting, and watching of arms, and all that--folly----" A gleam of self-derision went over his face, and yet it was deadly serious underneath. "It was no folly," she said. "Oh, do you think I don't know that? The devil laughs in me, now and then, but I don't mean it. Oona--let me call you Oona, now, if never again--I had neither watched nor prayed----" He made a pause, looking at her pitifully; and she, drawn, she knew not how, answered, with tears in her eyes, "I have heard that you--had strayed----" "That means accidentally, innocently," he said. "It was not so. I had thought only of myself: when I was caught in the grip of a will stronger than mine, unprepared. There was set before me--no, not good and evil as in the books, but subjection to one--who cared neither for good nor evil. I was bidden to give up my own will, I who had cared for nothing else: to give up even such good as was in me. I was not cruel. I cared nothing about worldly advantages; but these were henceforward to be the rule of my life--pleasant, was it not?" he said with a laugh, "to a man who expected to be the master--of everything round." At the sound of his laugh, which was harsh and wild, Hamish, raising himself so as to catch the eye of his mistress, gave her a questioning, anxious look. Oona was very pale, but she made an impatient gesture with her hand to her humble guardian. She was not herself at ease; an agonizing doubt lest Walter's mind should have given way had taken possession of her. She answered him as calmly as she could, but with a tremor in her voice, "Who could ask that, Lord Erradeen? Oh no, no--you have been deceived." "You ask me who! you who gave me your hand--your hand that was like snow--that had never done but kindness all your life--and saved me--so that I defied him. And you ask me who?"