The wind being
from her, she did not even hear the hoof-beats until the horse had turned from
the glare of the sun into the shadow of the fern-bordered lane. The first she
knew of it, she glanced over her shoulder and saw the red-cloaked figure
riding toward her along the grass-grown path.
As naturally as a flower opens its heart at the coming of the sun, she leaned
toward him, breathing his name; then in an impulse equally natural, as he
leaped from his saddle before her, she drew back and half averted her face,
flickering red and white like the blossoms she was clasping to her breast.
He stopped abruptly, a short stretch of grass still between them, wand it
soothed her bruised pride a little that there was no longer any confident ease
in his manner but only hesitation and uncertainty. His voice was greatly
troubled as he spoke: "Never can I forgive myself for having wounded you,
sweetheart, yet had I hoped that you might forgive me, because I knew not what
I did and because I have suffered so sorely for it."
"_You_ have suffered," she repeated with a little accent of bitterness.
"I beseech you by my love that you do not doubt it!" Hesitation gave way
before a warmth of reproach. "For a man to know that he has wounded what he
would have died to shield --that he has wronged where he would have given his
life to honor--that it may be he has lost what is body and soul to him,--what
else is that but suffering?"
It was only a very little that her face turned toward him, and he could not
see how her downcast eyes were taking fire from his voice.
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