ut her image from his inspection. It was a mordant
touch of rebuke.

'Because I pardoned one trespass, you presume on another.'

'I presume nothing. I came, unhappily, only as I believed at your
expressed desire.'

'How? I desire you?' She added: 'You would say now you were loath to
come.'

'I was,' he admitted, ashamed for his lack of gratitude.

'Go--go!' she said, with a show of proud indifference, 'and see if the
gull that guided you here without my consent will guide you hence
_without my consent_.'

Insult and threat he recognised, and answered to the former first.

'Whatever you lay to my charge, I may hardly say a word in defence
without earning further disgrace for bare truth.'

'You did not of yourself return here? For far from you was any desire
ever to set eyes on me again?'

So well did she mask her mortal resentment, that the faint vibration in
her voice conveyed to him suspicion of laughter.

'On you--I think I had none--but for one thing,' he said, with honest
exactitude.

'And that?'

Reluctantly he gave the truth in naked simplicity.

'I did desire to see the colour of your eyes.'

She hid them, and broke into charming, genuine laughter.

'Do you know yet?' she said.

'No, for they are set overdeep for a woman, and the lashes shadow so.'

'Come nearer, then, and look.'

He stepped straight into the pool knee-deep and deeper, and with three
strides stood below. She bent her head towards him with her arms upon her
knee, propping it that a hand might cover irrepressible smiles. Her
beautiful eyes she opened wide for the frank grey eyes to consider. Many
a breath rose and fell, and neither offered to relinquish the intimate
close.

Beautiful eyes indeed! with that dark, indescribable vert iris that has
the transparent depth of shadowed sea-water. They were bright with happy
mirth; they were sweetly serious; they were intent on a deep inquiry into
his; they were brimming wells not to be fathomed; oh, what more? what
haunted their vague, sad, gracious mystery?

'Are you satisfied yet of their colour?' she asked quietly, bringing him
to a sense of the licence he indulged.

'Of their colour--yes.'

'How, then, are you not satisfied?'

'I do not know.'

'Bare truth!'

'What thoughts, then, lay behind while you looked down so?'

She kept her mouth concealed, and after a pause said low as a whisper:
'Looking at your eyes, I wondered if they would alter greatly when your
time ca