used to
them. I only tell you this, because I cannot bear that you should expose
yourself unnecessarily."

There was that in his manner which moved her as his light touch had
done that first night of their meeting, when he had bound up her wounded
temple with his handkerchief. It was that her womanhood--her hardly
used womanhood, of which she had herself thought with such pathetic
scorn--was always before him, and was even a stronger power with him
than her marvellous beauty.

She remembered the fresh bruise upon her brow, and felt its throb with
less of shame, because she bore it for his sake.

"Promise me one thing," he went on. "And do not think me ungracious in
asking it of you--promise me that you will not come out again through
any fear of danger for me, unless it is a greater one than threatens me
now and one I am unprepared to meet."

"I conna," she answered firmly. "I conna promise yo'. Yo' mun let me do
as I ha' done fur th' sake o' my own peace."

She made no further explanation, and he could not persuade her to alter
her determination. In fact, he was led to see at last, that there was
more behind than she had the will or power to reveal to him; something
in her reticence silenced him.

"Yo' dunnot know what _I_ do," she said before they parted. "An'
happen yo' would na quoite understand it if yo' did. I dunnot do things
lightly,--I ha' no reason to,--an' I ha' set my moind on seein' that th'
harm as has been brewin' fur long enow, shanna reach wheer it's aimed.
I mun ha' my way. Dunnot ask me to gi'e it up. Let me do as I ha' been
doin' fur th' sake o' mysen, if fur no one else."

The truth which he could not reach, and would not have reached if he had
talked to her till doomsday, was that she was right in saying that she
could not give it up. This woman had made no inconsequent boast when
she told her father that if deadly blows fell, they must fall first upon
herself. She was used to blows, she could bear them, she was fearless
before them,--but she could not have borne to sit at home, under any
possibility of wrong being done to this man. God knows what heavy
sadness had worn her soul, through the months in which she had never
for a moment flinched from the knowledge that a whole world lay
between herself and him. God knows how she had struggled against the
unconquerable tide of feeling as it crept slowly upon her, refusing to
be stemmed and threatening to overwhelm her in its remorseless waves.