was long ago, before I knew you--when I was eighteen."

"Ever since you were a boy!"

The look of wonder was not quite gone from her face yet, but she was
beginning to understand more clearly, though still very far from
distinctly. It did not occur to her once that such things could be
temptations to the brilliant young leader whom every woman admired and
every man flattered, and that only his devoted love for her had kept him
out of ignoble adventures since he had grown to be a man. Had she seen
that, she would have loved him even better, if it were possible. It was
all, as she had said, shameless and abominable. She had thought that she
knew much of evil, and she had even told him so that evening, but this
was far beyond anything she had dreamt of in her innocent thoughts, and
she instinctively felt that there were lower depths of degradation to
which a woman could fall, and of which she would not try to guess the
vileness and horror.

"Shall I burn the flowers, too?" asked Don John, taking them in his
hand.

"The flowers? No. They are innocent and fresh. What have they to do with
her? Give them to me."

He raised them to his lips, looking at her, and then held them out. She
took them, and kissed them, as he had done, and they both smiled
happily. Then she fastened them in her hair.

"No one will see me to-night but you," she said. "I may wear flowers in
my hair like a peasant woman!"