"You do well to mistrust me!" he answered, and with these words he caught both her hands and held them in his own, looking at her full in the face with eyes that flashed like jewels, "Your instinct teaches you rightly. Would there were many more like you to doubt me and repel me! One word,--if, when I am gone, you ever think of me, think that I am more to be pitied than the veriest paralysed and starving wretch that ever crawled on earth,--for he, perchance, has hope--and I have none. And when you pray for me--for I hold you to this promise,--pray for one who dares not pray for himself! You know the words, 'Lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil'? To-night you have been led into temptation, though you knew it not, but you have delivered yourself from evil as only a true soul can. And now farewell! In life I shall see you no more:--in death,--well! I have attended many death-beds in response to the invitations of the moribund,--but I shall not be present at yours! Perhaps, when your parting spirit is on the verge between darkness and light, you may know who I was, and am!--and you may thank God with your last breath that we parted to-night--as we do now--forever!" He loosened his grasp of her,--she fell back from him pale and terrified,--for there was something now in the dark beauty of his face that was unnatural and appalling. A sombre shadow clouded his brows,--his eyes had gleams in them as of fire,--and a smile was on his lips, half tender, half cruel. His strange expression moved even me to a sense of fear, and I shivered with sudden cold, though the air was warm and balmy. Slowly retreating, Mavis moved away, looking round at him now and then as she went, in wistful wonder and alarm,--till in a minute or two her slight figure in its shimmering silken white robe, had vanished among the trees. I lingered, hesitating and uncertain what to do,--then finally determining to get back to the house if possible without being noticed, I made one step, when Lucio's voice, scarcely raised, addressed me-- "Well, eavesdropper! Why did you not come out of the shadow of that elm-tree and see the play to a better advantage?" Surprised and confused, I advanced, mumbling some unintelligible excuse. "You saw a pretty bit of acting here," he went on, striking a match and lighting a cigar the while he regarded me coolly, his eyes twinkling with their usual mockery--"you know my theory, that all men and all women are purchaseable for gold? Well, I wanted to try Mavis Clare. She rejected all my advantageous offers, as you must have heard, and I could only make matters smooth by asking her to pray for me. That I did this very melodramatically I hope you will admit? A woman of that dreamy idealistic temperament always likes to imagine that there is a man who is grateful for her prayers!" "You seemed very much in earnest about it!" I said, vexed with myself that he had caught me spying.