out to follow her. The
last visit of the white leech, and the blow of the woman, had enfeebled
me, but already my strength was reviving, and I kept her in sight
without difficulty.

"Is this, then, the end?" I said as I went, and my heart brooded a
sad song. Her angry, hating eyes haunted me. I could understand her
resentment at my having forced life upon her, but how had I further
injured her? Why should she loathe me? Could modesty itself be indignant
with true service? How should the proudest woman, conscious of my every
action, cherish against me the least sense of disgracing wrong? How
reverently had I not touched her! As a father his motherless child, I
had borne and tended her! Had all my labour, all my despairing hope gone
to redeem only ingratitude? "No," I answered myself; "beauty must have
a heart! However profoundly hidden, it must be there! The deeper buried,
the stronger and truer will it wake at last in its beautiful grave! To
rouse that heart were a better gift to her than the happiest life! It
would be to give her a nobler, a higher life!"

She was ascending a gentle slope before me, walking straight and steady
as one that knew whither, when I became aware that she was increasing
the distance between us. I summoned my strength, and it came in
full tide. My veins filled with fresh life! My body seemed to become
ethereal, and, following like an easy wind, I rapidly overtook her.

Not once had she looked behind. Swiftly she moved, like a Greek goddess
to rescue, but without haste. I was within three yards of her, when she
turned sharply, yet with grace unbroken, and stood. Fatigue or heat she
showed none. Her paleness was not a pallor, but a pure whiteness; her
breathing was slow and deep. Her eyes seemed to fill the heavens, and
give light to the world. It was nearly noon, but the sense was upon
me as of a great night in which an invisible dew makes the stars look
large.

"Why do you follow me?" she asked, quietly but rather sternly, as if she
had never before seen me.

"I have lived so long," I answered, "on the mere hope of your eyes, that
I must want to see them again!"

"You WILL not be spared!" she said coldly. "I command you to stop where
you stand."

"Not until I see you in a place of safety will I leave you," I replied.

"Then take the consequences," she said, and resumed her swift-gliding
walk.

But as she turned she cast on me a glance, and I stood as if run through
with a spear. He