Why not he ?--by other means, for his good name rested on the word of a perjured woman.
Wealth was potent, but not all-powerful.

He would ask Iris to wait until he came to her unsoiled by slander, purged of this odium cast upon him unmerited.
And all this goes to show that he, a man wise beyond his fellows, had not yet learned the unwisdom of striving to lift the veil of tomorrow, behind whose mystic curtain what is to be ever jostles out of place what is hoped for.
Iris, smiling in her dreams, was assailed by no torturing doubts.
Robert loved her--that was enough.

Love suffices for a woman; a man asks for honor, reputation, an unblemished record.
To awake her he kissed her; he knew not, perchance it might be their last kiss on earth.

Not yet dawn, there was morning in the air, for the first faint shafts of light were not visible from their eyrie owing to its position.

But there was much to be done.