“If I have failed in obeying thy commands, I ask forgiveness, for I am but a woman. A woman with instincts and yearnings, born of the mother I never knew. Thy very treasures that were to appease me put the yearning more strongly in my brain. Thy teachings showed me a world of beasts and savagery; thy treasures gave me dreams of a world peopled by such as I would be. My mother’s blood forced me to seek this other, better world; thy blood forced me to seek it wrongfully.”

She paused, and gathered her fleeting breath.

Then, sitting suddenly upright, she flung both arms out to the setting sun now lipping the sea, and cried:

“Gods I know not. Yet must there be such, else had I never known the devotion of a Milo! Wherever ye be, brave