"The coast hereabouts is very rocky. It ought to have been possible to find some secret anchorage—but I tell you, I simply had not thought. I acted on an impulse stronger than myself, and a similar impulse would probably have brought me back to look for you."

He was on his feet now, regarding her anxiously, alarmed by the dull resignation of her tone and the defeat it betrayed. He saw how frail and ill she looked. He saw little in this woman, heavy with child, of the proud, indomitable creature who had known so well how to drive him to distraction with passion or with fury. But he discovered also, for all the revulsion her condition inspired in him, a new feeling, born of an instinctive urge to protect and defend her against the burden of a fate too heavy for her fragile shoulders, to rescue her from the ridiculous pass to which ill luck and her own hotheadedness had brought her.

Watching her as she struggled with painful slowness to rise from her divan, clinging to the arm of Lavinia, who had come at once to help her, he experienced a sudden wild desire to snatch her up in his arms and carry her away from this palace whose Oriental splendors were as shocking to his austere taste as to his native puritanism. He even made a move toward her but she halted him with a look.

"No," she said fiercely. "What you feel now is pity. And I do not want your pity."

"Don't be a fool! Pity? What gave you that idea? I swear to you—"

"Oh, no! Do not swear! When you came in just now I was ready to forget all that passed on board your ship. I believe I had forgotten—but you reminded me! I won't listen to any more. You shall listen, instead, to Jolival! Afterwards, as I said, you will be free to decide."

"To decide what?"

"If you want us to remain—friends. When you know the facts, you will know whether you can still hold me in any esteem. Your feelings are a matter for your own heart."

"Stay," Jason begged her. "I know my own mind."

"You are fortunate. I cannot say the same for myself. I was happy a moment ago, but now I do not know… And so I would rather go."

"Let her go," Jolival said. "She is tired and ill. She needs rest. What she does not need is the ordeal which the telling of this tale would be for her. There are things it does no good to recall. And I shall feel freer to say what is in my mind. Donna Lavinia," he added in a much warmer tone, "would you add to all your kindness by asking them to send us in some coffee? A great deal of coffee. I think we shall both be needing it."

"You shall have all the coffee you want, Monsieur le Vicomte, and something more substantial to go with it. I daresay this gentleman could do with something to eat."

Jason had opened his mouth as though to refuse when Marianne forestalled him.

"You may accept the bread and salt of this house, for it belongs to the friend who has watched over you—and me also—for these past months. There is one thing more I wish to say before I go. Whatever you may have been thinking, you shall have your ship again. Jolival will give you her papers."

"How's this? You told me she belonged to you. Yet she is flying a strange flag."

"The colors are those of Turhan Bey," Marianne responded wearily. "He is the owner of this house. But they are only there to keep the Witch out of the English ambassador's hands. As Jolival has told you already, my kinswoman, the sultana, purchased her as a gift for me but I have never thought of her as anything but a trust."

With a strength surprising in her wasted body, she dragged Donna Lavinia from the room, striving to hold back her tears.

It cost her something to tear herself away from the man she had so longed to see, but it was more than she could bear to listen to Jolival recounting in detail those abominable nights in the Palazzo Soranzo and all that had followed. For although she had been simply a victim throughout, yet there were things it still shamed her bitterly to recall. And she was determined not to be put to the blush in front of the man she loved. Too often in the past he had been inclined to cast her in the undeserved role of the guilty party.

The American's nature was at the same time simple and highly complex. His love for Marianne was probably as great as ever and this was the one comfort she had been able to extract from the few brief moments they had been together. On the other hand, Jason was the product of an almost puritanically Protestant upbringing whose rigid moral principles did not, however, prevent him, in spite of a naturally generous and even chivalrous nature, from being an unquestioning supporter of slavery, which in his eyes was the natural condition of the blacks, a thing with which Marianne could by no means agree.

It was this fundamental division which was at the root of all he said and did. A woman might look for every consideration and respect from him, but let her once err and his reaction would be harsh and complete. The unhappy female would be relegated in his mind to the common herd of creatures whom he must have met in every port on earth and who, in his eyes, deserved less even than the slaves at Faye Blanche, his family's plantation near Charleston. If once a member of this uncertain sex succeeded, as Marianne had done, in inspiring him with a real passion, then the exquisitely regulated machine which was Jason Beaufort was thrown out of gear.

Back in her own room, Marianne eyed her enormous bed without enthusiasm. Tired as she was, she felt no urge to sleep. Her thoughts would keep straying anxiously to the warm tandour where Jason sat listening to Jolival telling the hateful story, without mincing his words, no doubt, because it had been clear that the vicomte meant to spare his hearer nothing.

Marianne could not help smiling inwardly as she thought of her old friend's outburst of rage and she thanked heaven yet again for giving her one person in her turbulent life who would always spring to her defense. In her present state, she was in no condition to stand up to Jason's principles. Her cheeks still burned at the memory of the scene on board the Sea Witch.

Turning her back on the bed which a maidservant had turned down for her, she dropped on to the huge white satin cushion which was set before a low table covered with a vast assortment of pots and jars. Donna Lavinia came behind her and, settling a blue linen towel around her shoulders, began to take out the pins that held her heavy coil of hair in place. Marianne suffered her to finish and then, when her black locks fell freely about her shoulders, checked her as she was picking up the silver hairbrushes.

"Lavinia, dear," she said softly, "I want you to go back to the tandour, or into the blue drawing room, at least. Monsieur de Jolival might need you."

The old lady smiled understandingly.

"I believe I sent for everything he should want. But perhaps you would wish me to deliver a message to him?"

"Yes. I'd like you to ask him—quite privately—if he will come here before he goes to bed. Tell him to be sure to come, however late it is. I shall not go to bed until—"

"But that is very wrong of you, my lady. The doctor said you were to go to bed early and get plenty of sleep."

"That's easier said than done when I cannot sleep at all. Very well, come back and help me into bed but do not close the door or put the lights out. Then you may go to bed. There's no need for you to wait up for the vicomte. The gentlemen may stay talking for a long time."

"Should I give orders for a room to be made ready for Your Highness's friend?"

Donna Lavinia's voice had stiffened slightly with the words. Her loving, faithful heart had made her sense in the tall and all too attractive stranger a danger and a threat to the master who had always been so dear to her. And Marianne was suddenly ashamed of the situation brought about by Jason's untimely arrival. She was a woman bringing her lover into her husband's house—a husband from whom she had had nothing but kindness. In vain she told herself that she was paying a high price for it. The unpleasant feeling remained. The part she had elected to play was certainly no easy one.

The look she gave Lavinia was unconsciously apologetic.

"I don't really know. He may go away at once, but on the other hand he may be glad to spend the night here. At all events, he won't be staying more than a few hours."

The housekeeper nodded. She helped Marianne into her nightdress and put her into the big bed, arranging the pillows carefully at her back. Then she checked the lamps to make sure that oil and wicks were as they should be and went away, with a little curtsy, to carry out the task entrusted to her.

Marianne, left alone, lay still for a moment, savoring the scented warmth of the sheets and the soft light in the room. She tried to make her mind a blank, not to think at all, but it was more than she could manage. Her thoughts would keep returning to the tandour. She pictured the two men there: Jolival prowling around in the small space between the stove and the divans. Jason, sitting down, with his hands clasped between his knees in the way that she had seen him sit a hundred times, whenever he wanted to give someone his full attention. For all the coldness of her words to him, Marianne had never loved him more.

In an effort to distract her mind, she picked up at random one of the books that lay on her bedside table but, although she knew the text almost by heart, her brain seemed incapable of taking anything in beyond the title. The book was The Divine Comedy, one of her favorites, but it might have been written in Hittite characters for all her eyes could make of it. She finished by tossing it aside impatiently, closed her eyes—and was asleep before she knew it.

She woke to a sudden pain. She could not have been asleep for long because the level of the oil in her bedside lamp had hardly dropped at all. Everything about her was in complete silence. The darkened palace seemed to be asleep, muffled in the soft cocoon of its curtains, its cushions and its hangings. Yet it was certain that not everyone could be asleep, for Jolival had not come.

Marianne lay for a moment with her eyes wide open, listening to the beating of her own heart and observing the progress of the pain which had started in the lower part of her belly and spread slowly to invade her whole body. It was not a bad pain and already it was fading, but it was a warning, a foretaste perhaps of what was in store for her. Had the time come to lay down her burden at last?

She lay and wondered what she ought to do and decided to wait for another pain to come and confirm what might easily be a too-hasty assumption before sending for the doctor who, at this time of night, would certainly be fast asleep in his bed. She had just stretched out her hand to ring the bell for Donna Lavinia, to ask her what she thought, when there was a soft tap on the door. It opened without waiting for an answer, and Arcadius looked in.

"May I come in?"

"Yes, of course. I've been expecting you."

The pain had quite gone now. Marianne sat up in bed and settled herself among her pillows, refreshed by the smile on her friend's face, which bore no sign of the anger which had been there earlier. In the shadows of the big bed, Marianne's eyes were bright with the anticipation of happiness.

"Jason? Where is he?"

"At this moment I should think he must be getting into bed. He can do with some sleep. So can I, in fact, because along with the coffee Donna Lavinia sent in a bottle of first-rate brandy. I don't like to think what she'd say if she knew we'd finished it."

Marianne's jaw dropped. It was too much! While she had been picturing them engaged in serious, even tragic conference, there the two of them had been quite simply getting drunk together! There was no mistaking Jolival's beaming countenance, the flush mantling his nose and the glazed look in his eyes. He was in what was commonly called a state of mild inebriation and Marianne wondered whether this temporary euphoria was, after all, a cause for great rejoicing.

"You still have not told me where he is," she said severely. "Although I am glad to see that you appear to have passed an agreeable evening."

"Most agreeable. We are in perfect agreement. But you were asking me where our friend is now? The answer is, he's in the room next to mine."

"He has consented to spend the night here? In Prince Sant'Anna's house?"

"He had no reason to refuse. Besides, who said anything about Prince Sant'Anna? This house belongs to Turhan Bey. In other words, the man whom Beaufort knew as Caleb."