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. He stood
looking at her in despair, until something in the poise of her head
taught him a new rune among love's spells. Drawing softly near her, he
spoke in noblest conciliation: "Is it your pride that cannot pardon me,
Lady of Avalcomb? Do I seem to sue for grace too boldly because I forget
to make my body match the humbleness of my heart? Except in prayer or
courtesy, we are not loose of knee, we Angles, but I would stoop as low
as I lowest might if that could make you kinder, dear one." Baring his
head, he knelt down at her feet,--and the difference between this and
the time when he had bent before her in the Abbey, was the difference
between tender jest and tenderest earnest. "Thus then do I ask you to
give me back your love," he said gently,--and would have said more but
that she turned, stirred to a kind of generous shame.

"It needs not that, lord! I know you did not mean it. And they have told
me that--that I have no right to be angry with you--" She broke off,
as looking into his face she saw something that startled her into
forgetfulness of all else. "Why are your cheeks so hollow?" she
demanded. "And so gray--as though you had lost blood? Lord, what has
come near you?"

He could not conceal the sudden pleasu