Page:Anthony Hope--The Heart of Princess Osra.djvu/287

Rh The lady looked at her with wondering eyes, and then she smiled faintly, pressing the Prince's hand, and whispering:

"Yet she is so beautiful." And she seemed now wonderfully happy, so that they three all watched her and were envious, although they were to live and she to die.

"Now God pardon her sin!" said the Princess Osra suddenly, and she fell on her knees beside the couch, crying: "Surely God has pardoned her!"

"Sin she has none, save what clings even to the purest in this world," said the Bishop. "For what she has said to me I know to be true."

Osra answered nothing, but gazed in questioning at the Prince, and he, still holding the lady's hand, began to speak in a gentle voice:

"Do not ask her name, madame. But from the first hour that we knew the meaning of love we have loved one another. And had the issue rested in my hands, I would have thrown to the winds all that kept me from her. I remember when first I met her—ah, my sweet, do you remember? From that day to this in soul she has been mine, and I hers in all my life. But more could not be. Madame, you have asked