“I returned to lay our first-fruits at madam’s feet,” he explained, his darkly watchful eyes upon us both. “A gift from one poor prisoner to another, madam.” He dropped the flowers in her lap. “Will you wear them, lady? They are as fair almost as I could wish.”

She touched the blossoms with listless fingers, said they were fair; then, rising, let them drop upon the sand. “I wear no flowers save of my husband’s gathering, my lord,” she said.

There was a pathos and weariness in her voice, and a mist of unshed tears in her eyes. She hated him; she loved me not, yet was forced to turn to me for help at every point, and she had stood for weeks upon the brink of death and looked unfalteringly into the gulf beneath her.