beset with dangers.  As long before, she came to him in a sort of waking vision—­a being but half earthly, enthroned high above him, calm-browed, very pure, with passionless eyes that gazed into far distance and were unaware of the base things below.  What would she think of him, who had sworn to be true knight to her, if she could know how he had bungled and failed?  He was glad that she did not know, that if he had blundered into peril the knowledge of it could not reach her to hurt her pride.

And sometimes, also, with a great sadness and pity, he thought of poor Coira O’Hara and of the pathetic wreck her life had fallen into.  The girl was so patently fit for better things!  Her splendid beauty was not a cheap beauty.  She was no coarse-blown, gorgeous flower, imperfect at telltale points.  It was good blood that had modelled her dark perfection, good blood that had shaped her long and slim and tapering hands.

“A queen among goddesses!” The words remained with him, and he knew that they were true.  She might have held up her head among the greatest, this adventurer’s girl; but what chance had she had?  What merest ghost of a chance?

He watched her on the rare occasions when she came into the room.  He watched the poise of her head, her walk, the movements she made, and he said to himself that there was no woman of his acquaintance whose grace was more perfect—­certainly none whose grace was so native.

Once he complained to her of the desperate idleness of his days, and asked her to lend him a book of some kind, a review, even a daily newspaper, though it be a week old.

“I should read the very advertisements with joy,” he said.

She went out of the room and returned presently with an armful of books, which she laid upon the bed without comment.

“In my prayers, Mademoiselle,” cried Ste. Marie, “you shall be foremost forever!” He glanced at the row of titles and looked up in sheer astonishment.  “May I ask whose books these are?” he said.

“They are mine,” said the girl.  “I caught up the ones that lay first at hand.  If you don’t care for any of them, I will choose others.”

The books were:  Diana of the Crossways, Richard Feverel, Henri Lavedan’s Le Duel, Maeterlinck’s Pelleas et Melisande, Don Quixote de la Mancha, in Spanish, a volume of Virgil’s Eclogues, and the Life of the Chevalier Bayard, by the Loyal Servitor.  Ste. Marie stared at her.

“Do you read Spanish,” he demanded, “and Latin, as well as French and English?”

“My mother was Spanish,” said she.  “And as for Latin, I began to read it with my father when I was a child.  Shall I leave the books here?”

Ste. Marie took up the Bayard and held it between his hands.

“It is worn from much reading, Mademoiselle,” he said.

“It is the best of all,” said she.  “The very best of all.  I didn’t know I had brought you that.”