"You know!" she cried. "You know that that—that lackey Damiani raped me, that he forced himself on me—on me, your wife—again and again, week after week until I thought I should go mad, and you dare to tell me that my ordeal gave you hope? Don't you see that it's out of the question?"

"No," came the cold retort, "I don't. Damiani has paid for what he did to you. For what he did to you, I killed him and I killed his three witches also—"

"For what he did to me or for what he did to you? Was it my shame you were avenging, or the death of poor Donna Lavinia?"

"For you and you alone, and that you may believe since for my part I am still very much alive and so, for that matter, is dear old Lavinia. She had the good sense to feign death when Damiani attacked her and he thought in good faith that he had killed her. But she is still alive and so far as I know is at this moment governing our house at Lucca. But to return to Matteo. It is still a fact that, criminal wretch though he was, he comes of the same blood as I myself. A bastard maybe, but far more of a Sant'Anna than Napoleon's son could ever have been."

Marianne's anger had given way for a moment at the good news that Donna Lavinia was still alive but it flared up again at the injury contained in this last remark.

"Well, I loathe even the memory of the man!" she cried. "And it sickens me, this thing inside me that I will not even call a child! I do not want it, do you hear? I won't have it! Not for anything in the world!"

"Be sensible! Whether you like it or not, this thing, as you call it, is still a human being, already there, at this moment, and it is your own flesh and blood that is going to the making of him. He is a part of you, made of the same substance—"

"No! No!" Marianne was protesting like a child arguing in the face of all the evidence. " It's not possible! It can't be! I won't have it—"

"Come now. You know that isn't true. You wouldn't be fighting it so desperately if your heart were not engaged, if—if Jason Beaufort had never entered your life. It's because of him, and him alone, that you want to be rid of this child."

It was not said as a reproach, simply as a quiet statement of fact, but in the eyes that were fixed on hers Marianne could read such sadness and resignation that, on the point of proclaiming aloud the power of her love and her right to live it, she remembered just in time that Jason had once condemned this man, whose name she bore, to die under the lash. A little ashamed, she let her eyes fall.

"How did you know?"

He made a vague movement with one hand and shrugged again.

"I know a great many things about you. From your godfather, firstly, for whom I have a great love, for he is kindness and understanding itself. And surely it was natural for me to feel some interest in your life? No," he added quickly, seeing her movement of protest, "I have not had you spied on—or not directly, at any rate. To have done so would have been to demean us both. But someone else did, against my orders and indeed without telling me everything. But most of my information comes from the emperor himself."

"The emperor!"

"Why, yes. Considering the circumstances of our marriage, it was common courtesy for me to inform him of it personally and to give him certain assurances concerning you, since I was to give my name to his son. I wrote to him and he wrote back—more than once."

There was a pause while Marianne thought over what she had just heard. It was not hard to guess who it was who had set spies on her. Matteo Damiani, of course. But that there had been correspondence between Napoleon and the prince came as something of a surprise to her, although when the emperor had told her after François Vidocq had brought her back from Normandy that he wished her to return to her husband, he had mentioned a letter from Sant'Anna. She was not sure whether to interpret this as a sign of affection or of distrust and decided it was best to probe no further for the moment. There were too many other points on which she desired enlightenment.

Corrado, respecting her silence, had been looking out at the gathering darkness in the garden. The sun had sunk behind the trees, outlining them dramatically against long streaks of purple and gold. A faint chill was creeping into the room and the air was vibrant with the muezzins' high-pitched calls.

Marianne hitched up the green silk shawl which had slipped from her shoulders.

"And was it the emperor who told you that Jason Beaufort would be in Venice?" she asked at last, with a little hesitation.

"No. By that time I was in no position to discover anything at all. I learned of the trap which had been laid for you—and of what followed, from Matteo himself. In the end, I think, his ambition had driven him mad. I was chained and helpless and he had great satisfaction in describing it all to me. Thinking about it later, it seemed to me that it was for the pleasure of that he kept me alive."

"Then how did you come to be aboard the Sea Witch?"

Again, that faint, bleak smile.

"That was pure luck. When first I managed to escape my one idea was to see justice done and set you free without your seeing me. Damiani had told me that you thought I was dead and at that time I saw no reason why you should ever learn otherwise."

"But he had told you he wanted me to give him the Sant'Anna heir he needed?"

"Yes, but I could see that he was sick, drugged, practically insane. I did not think that he could do it. So I struck out and fled to escape any awkward questions on the part of the authorities. I wanted to get to Lucca, the only place where I could show myself with any safety. I'd found money in Matteo's room—enough to pay a boatman to take me to Chioggia. And it was there that luck took a hand. I caught sight of the American brig—and the figure on the prow. I'd known for long enough whose ship she was, but your face on that figurehead told me I was not mistaken and I wanted to find out if she had come for you. I think you know the rest… And I want to ask you pardon."

"My pardon? What have I to forgive?"

"For yielding to the impulse which took me aboard that vessel. I had sworn that I would never stand in your way but that day I could not help myself. I had to see this Beaufort, know what kind of man he was. It was something stronger than myself…"

For the first time since he had come into the room, Marianne really smiled. The surge of indignation which had taken possession of her a moment ago was still quivering inside, but she could not help feeling a sudden liking for this strange, unhappy man.

"Don't be sorry. But for you, I don't know what would have become of us on that hellish voyage—and by now my old friend Jolival would be a slave or worse! As for Captain Beaufort, it was not within your power to save him from—from disaster!" Her voice broke and she said no more, knowing that she could not trust herself not to break down. The mere mention of Jason's name was enough to overwhelm her, even though she knew that such emotion was out of place here and that for all the unusual nature of the contrast between them it could not be pleasant for Prince Sant'Anna to be obliged to discuss his wife's lover.

In fact he had risen with some abruptness and was pacing the room with his back to her. As before, on the deck of the Sea Witch, Marianne was struck by his lithe, easy bearing and by the impression of controlled strength about him, but she was discovering that even with his face uncovered, even without the leather mask whose whiteness now was self-explanatory, this man remained an enigma, not easily to be understood.

She was too much a woman not to wonder how he felt toward her. The shattering announcement he had just made, the fact that he could say in so many words that he wanted her to have the child conceived under such appalling circumstances, was almost insulting. It suggested that the prince cared nothing for her feelings and that, to use a favorite expression of Napoleon's, she was in his eyes nothing more or less than a womb!

And yet, when he could have gone quietly back to his Tuscan estates after killing Damiani, he had deliberately chosen a perilous adventure in order to go after a wife who, when all was said and done, had not been much good to him. What was it he had said? "I could not help myself… It was stronger than I was…"Or was his real interest in Jason? Curiosity, after all, was not an exclusively female prerogative. Perhaps it was only natural that he should want to meet the man his wife loved. But it was a very great risk to take for such a meager satisfaction because, in going aboard the Witch, Corrado Sant'Anna had been cutting himself off from all his usual roots. All he would have found at the end of the voyage as originally planned was the vast, unknown American continent, lying on the other side of the ocean—and the lifetime of slavery to which he almost certainly would have been condemned by the color of his skin.

Unable to find an answer to any of these questions, Marianne gazed helplessly at the tall white figure. Their conversation had reached such an extremely difficult stage that she was at a loss how to go on. But it was the prince who broke the silence.

Standing before the portrait of the hospodar which he was studying with remarkable concentration, he said without turning around: "Man has a very great need to perpetuate himself. That one up there tried all his life to do it but without success. I am an aberration in my family tree which will pass and be forgotten, but only if there is an heir—one who is normal and free from the taint I bear—to come after me. You are my one chance of that. Will you give me my heir?"