He spoke but with the matter-of-factness of a soldier reconnoitring a
position, but on the girl in the page's dress the words fell like blows. Then
it was that she realized for the first time how ill a crumb can satisfy the
hunger which asks for a loaf; that she knew that her body was not the only
part of her which was starving. Somewhere on that dark stairway she lost the
boyishness out of her nature forever. The thin cheeks were white under their
tan when they came again into the light of the guard-room fire; and the blue
eyes had in them a woman's reproach.
"It would show no more than friendship if you said that you were sorry to have
me go," she told him with quivering lips. "Are you so eager in getting me off
that you cannot say you will miss me?"
But the young lord only laughed good-humoredly as he poured the wine. "What a
child you are! Do you not know those things without my telling you? And as for
missing you, I am not likely to have time. The first chance you get, you will
slip back to me if you do not, I will come after you and flog you into the
bargain; be there no forgetting!"
She could not laugh as she would once have done; instead she choked in the cup
and pushed it from her. A passionate yearning came over her for one such word,
one such look, as he would give the dream-lady when she should come.
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