And yet Tristan knew that cowled and muffled form. He knew the eyes that had surprised their tryst. It was Count Roger de Laval. The muffled shadow was gone as quickly as it had come. It was growing ever darker in the forest, and when he looked up again he saw that Hellayne's white roses were scattered on the ground. Her scarf of blue samite had fallen heedlessly beside them. He lifted it and pressed it to his lips. "Will you give it to me?" he said tremulously. "That it may be with me always--" There was no immediate response. At last she said slowly: "You shall have it--a parting gift--" He seized her hands. They lay passively within his own. There was a great fear in his eyes. "I do not understand--" She loosened the roses from her hair and garb before she made reply. Silently, like dead leaves in autumn, the fragrant petals dropped one by one to earth. Hellayne watched them with weary eyes as they drifted to their sleep, then, as she held the last spray in her hand, gazing upon it she said: "When you gave them to me, Tristan, they were sweet and fresh, the fairest you could find. Now they have faded, perished, died--" He started to plead, to protest, to silence her, but she continued: "Ah! Can you not see? Can you not understand? Perchance," she added bitterly, "I was created to adorn the fleeting June afternoon of your life, and when this scarf is torn and faded as these flowers, let the wind carry it away,--like these dead petals at our feet--" She let fall the withered spray, but he snatched it ere it touched the ground. "I love you," he stammered passionately. "I love you! Love you as no woman was ever loved. You are my world--my fate-- Hellayne! Hellayne! Know you what you say?"-- She gazed at him, with eyes from which all life had fled. "I am another's," she said slowly. "I have sinned in loving you, in giving to you my soul. And even as you stood there and held me in your arms, it flashed upon me, like lightning in a dark stormy night--I saw the abyss, at the brink of which we stand, both, you and I."-- "But we have done no wrong--we have not sinned," he protested wildly. She silenced him with a gesture of her beautiful hands. "Who may command the waters of the cataract, go here,--or go there? Who may tell them to return to their lawful bed? I have neither power nor strength, to resist your pleading. You have been life and love to me, all,--all,--and all this you are to-day. And therefore must we part,--part, ere it be too late--" she concluded with a wild cry of anguish, "ere we are both engulfed in the darkness."-- And he fell at her feet as if stunned by a thunderbolt. "Do not send me away--" he pleaded, his voice choked with anguish. "Do not send me from you." "You will go," she said softly, deaf to his prayers. "It is the supreme test of your love, great as I know it is."