ace with a strange look of
inquiring doubt, which momentarily settled into an expression of deeper
apprehension. The blackness of despair began to enter into his soul. Now
that she was divested of her borrowed richness, she looked more like
herself, and that was surely her voice uttering tones of greeting; but
somehow her heart did not seem to be in them, and, for a certainty, this
had not been her wonted style of welcome.

'I thought,' she continued, 'that thou wert slain. Certainly when I
parted from you ere you fled into the mountains--'

'You know that I fled not at all,' he interrupted, the color mounting
into his temples. 'Why do you speak so, Leta? I retired to the mountains
to meet my friends there and with them carry on the defence; and,
previous thereto, I conducted you to what I believed to be a place of
safety. And I fought my best against the foe, and was brought nigh unto
death. This I did, though I can boast of but a weak and slender frame.
And it is hard that the first greeting of one so well loved as you
should be a taunt.'

'Nay, forgive me,' she said. 'I doubt not your valor. It was but in
forgetfulness that I spoke. I meant it not for a taunt.' And in truth
she had not so meant it. It was but the inadvertent expression of a
feeling which the sight of his feeble and boyish figure unwittingly made
upon her--an incapacity to connect deeds of valor with apparent physical
weakness. But this very inability to judge of his true nature by the
soul that strove to look into her own rather than by material
impressions was perhaps no slight proof of the little unison between her
nature and his.

'Sit down here,' she continued, 'and tell me all that has happened to
you.' And they sat together, and he briefly told her of his warlike
adventures, his wound, his captivity, his recognition of herself, and
his successful attempt to be once more under the same roof with her. And
somehow it still seemed to him that their talk was not as of old, and
that her sympathy with his misfortunes was but weak and cheerless; and
though he tried to interweave the customary words of endearment with his
story, there was a kind of inner check upon him, so that they came not
readily to his lips as of old. And she sat, trying to listen, and indeed
keeping the thread of his adventures in her mind; but all the while
finding her attention fail as she speculated how she could best give
that explanation of her feelings which she knew woul