I heard the sound of footsteps creeping towards me and Heliodore's voice say,
"Let me see your face, you who name yourself Olaf, for know that in these haunted tombs ghosts and visions and mocking voices play strange tricks. Why do you hide your face, you who call yourself Olaf?"
"Because the eyes are gone from it, Heliodore. Irene robbed it of the eyes from jealousy of you, swearing that never more should they behold your beauty. Perchance you would not wish to come too near to an eyeless man wrapped in a beggar's robe."
She looked—I felt her look. She sobbed—I heard her sob, and then her arms were about me and her lips were pressed upon my own.
So at length came joy such as I cannot tell; the joy of lost love found again.
A while went by, how long I know not, and at last I said,
"Where is Martina? It is time we left this place."
"Martina!" she exclaimed. "Do you mean Irene's lady, and is she here? If so, how comes she to be travelling with you, Olaf?"
"As the best friend man ever had, Heliodore; as one who clung to him in his ruin and saved him from a cruel death; as one who has risked her life to help him in his desperate search, and without whom that search had failed."
"Then may God reward her, Olaf, for I did not know there were such women in the world. Lady Martina! Where are you, lady Martina?"
Thrice she cried the words, and at the third time an answer came from the shadows at a distance.
