s in her face also. It bore the marks
of sleeplessness and suffering. Pride still made her eyes reticent and
cold, but the old outrageous arrogance was gone.

In the wave of tenderness for her that engulfed him he clean forgot the
self-pleasing defiance he had imagined for himself, forgot his
desperate situation, forgot everything but her.

He was unable to speak, and Colina did not immediately offer to. She
stood a step inside the door, with her hand on the back of the one
chair the room contained. Her eyes were cast down. It was Emslie who
broke the silence.

"Do you wish me to stay?" he respectfully asked Colina.

She raised grave eyes to Ambrose. "Is there anything I can do for
you?" she asked evenly.

"Yes," said Ambrose breathlessly.

After a moment's hesitation she said to Emslie: "Please wait outside."

Ambrose's heart leaped up. No sooner had the door closed behind Emslie
than, forgetting everything, it burst its bonds. "Colina! How good of
you to come! It makes me so happy to see you! If you knew how I had
hungered and thirsted for a sight of you! How charming you look in
that dress! Your hair is done differently, too. I swear it is like
the sun shining in here. You look tired. Sit down. Have some tea.
What a fool I am! You don't want to eat in a jail, do you?"

Her eyes widened with amazement at his outburst.

She shrank from him.

"Don't be afraid," he said. "I'm not going to touch you--a jailbird!
I'm not fooling myself. I know how you feel toward me. I can't help
it. If you knew how I had been bottled up! I must speak to some one
or go clean off my head. It makes me forget just to see you. Ah, it
was good of you to come!"

"I am visiting all the prisoners," Colina was careful to explain. "And
getting them what they need for the journey to-morrow."

It pulled him up short. He glanced at her with an odd smile, tender,
bitter, and grim. "Charity!" he murmured. "Thanks, I have plenty of
warm clothes, and so forth."

Colina bit her lip. There was a silence. He gazed at her hungrily.
She was so dear to him it was impossible for him to be otherwise than
tender.

"Just the same, it was mighty good of you to come," he said.

"You said there was something I could do for you," she murmured.

"Please sit down."

She did so.

"I don't want to beg any personal favors," he said. "There is
something you might do for the sake of justice."

"Never mind that," she said