"A God thou canst not pray to, traitor? Art afraid, then?"
"Not afraid, Milo," she whispered, and her eyelids drooped. "I cannot pray to one who looks down upon me as thou dost."
"I?" The giant's expression changed to frowning displeasure rather than anger. "I?" he repeated.
"Thee, my heart. Thou'rt my god, my all. For thee I have done this thing. For thee, who even now canst not see where lies the falsity. Milo"--her weak voice sank to a low murmur--"I beg thy forgiveness. My love for thee caused me to sin. My life is to pay the supreme price. Let me die at least in thy forgiveness."
"Forgive? Forgive thee, who worked for the destruction of the being I worship? Rather shall I speed thy soul!"
Pascherette struggled to a kneeling position, crossed her tiny hands on her panting breast, and looked full into his eyes as a wounded hart looks at the hunter. Her lip quivered, her small, gold-tinted face, once so piquant and full of allure, had taken on a gray hue from her pain, but there was no hiding the great, overwhelming love for the giant that gleamed in her eyes.
"Milo," she said, and the word was a caress, "Milo, if thou must, strike swiftly. Yet again I ask, forgive."
The giant slowly lowered his great ax, and his honest heart answered the pitiful plea. His deep chest swelled and throbbed; into his face crept the look that had been there on that day when he told Pascherette he loved her--loved her, yet worshiped Dolores as his gods. Letting the ax fall to his elbow by the thong at the haft, he stooped and tenderly picked up the girl, carrying her as a child carries a doll; yet his face was averted from Pascherette's passionate lips that sought to kiss him.
"Not yet can I forgive thee," he said. "Be content that I shall not kill thee, girl. Perhaps, if thy acts have failed in their end, I may forgive thee; not yet."
He carried her around to the great rock, and through the passage into the great chamber, bursting in upon a situation of growing intensity. Dolores sat on a corner of the table, with all her seductive lures in her beautiful face, smiling invitingly at Rupert Venner. Craik Tomlin glared at both, yet his gaze seemed hard to restrain from wandering around the gorgeous chamber, whose wealth he saw now for the first time. Venner, too, had been seized by the jewel-hunger, although neither he, nor Tomlin, guessed at the immensely greater wealth that had been revealed to Pearse. As for Pearse, he sat glowering in his chair, nervous and smoldering; ready at a hint to draw steel without caring what the object. He simply saw rivalry where fifteen minutes before he had thought his own course clear.