"Come, Master!" cried Fina, leaping up, and springing to the wall itself, where he had stood.

"Come down!" cried the pit master, in horror. He put out his hand, but he was afraid to approach her, for fear she might leap down, or he might, inadvertently, cause her to lose her balance. "Come down, I beg you!" he wept.

"You beg a slave?" she laughed.

"She should certainly be beaten," said the officer.

"Come down!" cried the pit master!

"Let her jump," said the officer. "She is only a slave."

"She is Fina!" he wept.

"Come up, Master," she laughed. "Let us die together. Let us leap to the rocks below, caught one last time in one another's arms!"

"No!" he cried.

"I love you!" she cried. "I will not live without you."

"You cannot love me," he wept. "I am a beast, a monster, hated and shunned, so born, and so condemned to live."

"You will never know the beauty, the shining beauty, the truth, I see within you!" she cried.

"I give you my word," said the officer, "within the rights of my code, and sworn in the name of the Home Stone itself, that if you shall accomplish upon yourself this injustice, I shall see that she will be free to follow you, whether it be from this ledge, or by the cord or knife."

"No!" cried the pit master.

"It is so sworn."

"Come, let us die together, Master," said Fina.

"I, not you!" he said.

"We," she said.

"No!" he said.

"Then I alone!" she said. "Do you think that I can live, having caused you to compromise your honor?"

The pit master turned about, crying out with misery, his fists clenched.

"Keep her in chains," the pit master begged the officer. "Guarantee to me her life."

"That of a mere slave, do not be foolish."

"So you would set me this dilemma," said the pit master, "that either she must die or I must lose my honor?"

"And if she is to be the reason you cannot retain your honor, it seems that she, herself, is resolved to die."

"Come down," said the pit master to Fina.

"Master?" she asked the officer.

"Remain where you are," said the officer.

"Sleen!" cried the pit master.

"It seems we have reached an impa.s.se," said the officer, lightly.

"And how is it to be resolved?" asked the pit master, in fury. I feared he might extract that stiletto from his tunic and drive it into the heart of Terence.

"Easily," said Terence, "by Kaissa."

"Kaissa?"

"Of course."

"I see."

"Slave," said Terence to Fina. He snapped his fingers. "Come down!"

Fina came down from the wall.

The pit master hurried forward, to clasp her to him, but the officer interposed himself. "No,"

he said, sternly. "You do not own her. She is the property of Treve. Do not touch her." The pit master, bewildered, stepped back. Fina, too, was startled. The officer took her firmly by an arm and thrust her, as a slave, to Demetrion. He was the guard who had come first with us to the surface of the tower. He who had fetched Fina was Andar. "Bind her, hand and foot, and kneel her to the side," said Terence to Demetrion. Then to Andar he said, "Fetch a lantern, and a board, and pieces."

Fina, in a moment, was kneeling to one side, her wrists tied behind her back, and fastened to her crossed, bound, ankles. She could not rise to her feet. It is a quite common tie. It is often used in training, to accustom women to kneeling before men. She had first been put on her stomach. The hands are tied behind the back first, and then the ankles tied, and brought up, behind, and fastened to the bound wrists.

The woman is then put to her knees.

Andar, a little later, brought a lantern, and the board and pieces.

"The match is apparently of importance to you," said the pit master, bitterly, sitting down, cross-legged, before the board.

We heard the second bar sound. Tarn wire swayed overhead.

"You understand what is involved here," said the officer.

"Yes," said the pit master.

"And you," asked the officer of Fina.

"I think so," she said.

"If you win," said the officer to the pit master, "you may gleefully splash yourself upon the rocks at the foot of the wall, thereby bringing joy to the hearts of local wild sleen, and the slave, bound by her fear of compromising your honor, which compromise would then be in violation of our arrangements, will not seek to follow you in the path you have chosen. If I win, you will accept my concept of what is honorable in this matter, and so, too, will the slave."

"Agreed, for myself and for the slave," said the pit master.

"And no action pertinent to these matters is to be taken until the game is done?"

"Agreed, for myself and the slave," said the pit master.

"And this is sworn?"

"It is sworn."

"By the Home Stone?"

"By the Home Stone itself!" said the pit master, angrily.

"Excellent," said the officer.

He then picked up the board, with the pieces on it, went to the wall, and threw the entire board and pieces out into s.p.a.ce, over the wall.

"What have you done!" cried the pit master, in horror, rising up.

Fina was laughing and crying.

"I do not feel like playing now," said the officer. "Perhaps some other time."

"No, no," cried the pit master.

"As you may recall," said the officer, "no action pertinent to these matters is to be taken until the game is done."

"Play!" demanded the pit master.

"I think not," said the officer.

"You have tricked me!" cried the pit master, in fury.

I began to cry, too. The game, I realized, would never be played.

"Sometimes," said the officer, "the best Kaissa is no Kaissa."

"It seems you have won," said the pit master.

"It is all of us who have won," said the officer. "Untie her," he said to Andar.

Andar undid the knots which restrained Fina, and she, unbidden, leapt up and threw herself into the arms of the pit master, sobbing and laughing.

He held her to him, in confusion, in fury, in consternation.

"Up, Janice," said the officer, and I sprang to my feet, joyfully.

"It is chilly here," he said. "You must be half frozen. It is well you are with us. Else you might be picked up as a stray by the watch."

"Yes, Master," I said.

"Perhaps you can warm some wine in my compartments," he said.

"Gladly, Master," I said.

"You do not mind if I return her to the pits later in the morning, do you?" inquired Terence of the pit master.

"She is to be returned by the tenth Ahn, as you know," said the pit master.

I did not understand that. It sounded as though something had been arranged.

"Granted," said Terence.

"You tricked me," said the pit master.

"Do not despair," said the officer. "One cannot leap to one's death every day."

"How am I to live with myself?" asked the pit master. "My honor is by my honor betrayed."

"How could that be?" inquired the officer.

"As you have arranged it," said the pit master, bitterly.

"You did not lose a prisoner," said the officer. "You saved a prisoner.

He would have been murdered had you not acted as you did. In this, in protecting the prisoner, in preserving him, you kept the oath, in a manner far more profound than you realized."

"I did not keep the oath," said the pit master.

"Then the oath, my friend," said Terence, "kept you."

"I do not understand," said the pit master.

"We are sometimes moved by forces and understandings deeper than we can understand.

You acted in such a way as to fulfill your office more grandly than could have been possible in any other course of conduct."

The pit master held Fina to him. He looked at the officer, puzzled.

"In thinking you betrayed your oath, you were mistaken. Rather you were bringing about the very ends which it envisaged. Do you think that the meaning of an oath is the words it wears? It is rather what it celebrates and intends, the meaning behind the meanings of the words.

Repudiated in words, it was revered in deeds. Denied, it was fulfilled.

Forsworn, it was kept.

Honor rejected was honor transformed, honor restored. How often do we seek to do one thing and discover we have done another? How often we achieve ends which we do not intend. You have not betrayed the Home Stone of Treve. Rather you have kept her from the stains upon her which a venal administration would authorize."

"I would return to the depths," said the pit master.

"Hold!" said a voice.