"Shut up!" He spoke the words loudly.

Then quickly dropping his voice to a whisper he added, "For God's sake don't betray her! They saw her with us--everybody knows that it was the king's wife with you!" The king's wife! Nathaniel was too weak to analyze the words beyond the fact that they carried the dread truth of his fears deep into his soul.
Who would have come to him but Marion?
Who else would have kissed him?
It was her voice that had whispered in his ear--the thrill of her hand that had passed over his face.

And this man had said that she was the wife of the king! He heard the voices of other men near him but did not understand what they were saying.

He knew that after a moment there was a man on each side of him holding him by the arms, and mechanically he moved his legs, knowing that they wanted him to walk.

They did not guess how weak he was--how he struggled to keep from becoming too great a weight on their hands.