playing sad havoc with her powers of
speech.

"Farewell, Mistress Vernon," replied John. "I should be shameless if I
dared ask you to believe any word I can utter. Forget, if possible, that I
ever existed; forget me that you may not despise me. I am unworthy to
dwell even in the smallest of your thoughts. I am altogether base and
contemptible."

"N-o-o," sighed Dorothy, poutingly, while she bent low her head and toyed
with the gold lace of my cloak.

"Farewell," said John. He took a step or two backward from her.

"You are over-eager to leave, it seems to me," said the girl in an injured
tone. "I wonder that you came at all." John's heart was singing hosanna.
He, however, maintained his voice at a mournful pitch and said: "I must
go. I can no longer endure to remain." While he spoke he moved toward his
horse, and his head was bowed with real shame as he thought of the
pitiable fool he had made of himself. Dorothy saw him going from her, and
she called to him softly and reluctantly, "John."

He did not hear her, or perhaps he thought best to pretend that he did not
hear, and as he moved from her the girl became desperate. Modesty,
resentment, insulted womanhood and injured pride were all swept away by
the stream of her mighty love, and she cried again, this time without
hesitancy or reluctance, "John, John." She started to run toward him, but
my cloak was in her way, and the sword tripped her feet. In her fear lest
John might leave her, she unclasped the sword-belt from her waist and
snatched the cloak from her shoulders. Freed from these hindrances, she
ran toward John.

"John, do not leave me. Do not leave me." As she spoke, she reached an
open space among the trees and John turned toward her. Her hat had fallen
off, and the red golden threads of her hair, freed from their fastenings,
streamed behind her. Never before had a vision of such exquisite
loveliness sped through the moonbeams. So entrancing was her beauty to
John that he stood motionless in admiration. He did not go to meet her as
he should have done, and perhaps as he would have done had his senses not
been wrapped in benumbing wonderment. His eyes were unable to interpret to
his brain all her marvellous beauty, and his other senses abandoning their
proper functions had hastened to the assistance of his sight He saw, he
heard, he felt her loveliness. Thus occupied he did not move, so Dorothy
ran to him and fell upon his breast.

"You did not come to