ime to obtain
her; but having got her, he was no nearer to the mystery of her than
before. She was all his own, he thought. Her golden hair was for his
fingers, her lips were for his caress, her eyes looked love upon him
alone. Yet there were times when her lips were cold to his kisses, and
her eyes looked disdainfully upon his coarser passion. He would catch
her musing when he spoke to her, much as she would catch him sleeping
when she read to him--but she awoke with a start and a blush at her
forgetfulness, which he never did. He was not a man to brood over these
things; and, after some reflective pipes and ineffectual rubbings of his
head, he "gave it up". How was it possible, indeed, for him to solve the
mental enigma when the woman herself was to him a physical riddle? It
was extraordinary that the child he had seen growing up by his side day
by day should be a young woman with little secrets, now to be revealed
to him for the first time. He found that she had a mole on her neck, and
remembered that he had noticed it when she was a child. Then it was a
thing of no moment, now it was a marvellous discovery. He was in daily
wonderment at the treasure he had obtained. He marvelled at her feminine
devices of dress and adornment. Her dainty garments seemed to him
perfumed with the odour of sanctity.

The fact was that the patron of Sarah Purfoy had not met with many
virtuous women, and had but just discovered what a dainty morsel Modesty
was.

CHAPTER XVIII. IN THE HOSPITAL.

The hospital of Port Arthur was not a cheerful place, but to the
tortured and unnerved Rufus Dawes it seemed a paradise. There at
least--despite the roughness and contempt with which his gaolers
ministered to him--he felt that he was considered. There at least he was
free from the enforced companionship of the men whom he loathed, and to
whose level he felt, with mental agony unspeakable, that he was daily
sinking. Throughout his long term of degradation he had, as yet, aided
by the memory of his sacrifice and his love, preserved something of his
self-respect, but he felt that he could not preserve it long. Little by
little he had come to regard himself as one out of the pale of love and
mercy, as one tormented of fortune, plunged into a deep into which the
eye of Heaven did not penetrate. Since his capture in the garden of
Hobart Town, he had given loose rein to his rage and his despair. "I
am forgotten or despised; I have no name in