MARION FREED FROM BONDAGE "Gone!" moaned Winnsome again.

"She has gone--back--to--Strang!" Neil was crawling to them like a wounded animal across the sand.
She started toward him but Nathaniel stopped her.
"She is the king's--wife--" His throat was swollen so that he could hardly speak.
"No.

They are to be married to-night.

Oh, I thought she was going to stay!" She tore herself away from him to go to Neil, who had fallen upon his face exhausted, a dozen yards away.
In the wet sand, where the incoming waves lapped his hands and feet, Nathaniel sank down, his eyes staring out into the shimmering distance where Marion had gone.

His brain was in a daze, and he wondered if he had been stricken by some strange madness--if this all was but some passing phantasm that would soon leave him again to his misery and his despair.