And she saw that he meant no insult, that the words burst from him spontaneously. But not the less for that was their effect on her. She turned white, her very heart seeming to stop, she appeared to be about to swoon. While he, forgetting all but her shrinking beauty, devoured her with his eyes. Until he remembered himself. Then he turned from her to the window. “Forgive me!” he cried. “I did not know what I said. You came on me so suddenly; you looked so beautiful——” He stopped; he could not go on. And she was trembling from head to foot; but she made an effort to escape back to the commonplace. “I came,” she stammered—it was clear that she hardly knew what she was saying—“Miss Sibson told me to come to say that I—I was sorry, sir, that I—I misjudged you yesterday.” “Yesterday? Yesterday?” he cried, almost angrily. “Bah, it is an age since yesterday!” She could make no answer to that, though she knew well what he meant. If she answered him it was only by suffering him to gaze at her in an eloquent silence—a silence in which his eyes cried again and again, “How beautiful you are!” While her eyes, downcast, under trembling lashes, her heart beaten down, defenceless, cried only for “Quarter, quarter!” They were yards apart. The table, and on it Miss Sibson’s squat workbox and a pile of longcloth, was between them. Miss Sibson herself could have desired nothing more proper. And yet— _Farewell, farewell, my faithless shield, Thy lord at length is forced to yield. Vain, vain is every outward care, The foe’s within and triumphs there!_ It was all over. In her ears would ring for ever his words of worship—the cry of the man to the woman, “How beautiful you are!” She would thrill with pleasure when she thought of them, and burn with shame, and never, never, never be the same again! And for him, with that cry forced from him, love had become present, palpable, real, and the idea of marriage real also; an idea to be withstood, to be combated, to be treated as foolish, Byronic, impossible. But an idea which would not leave him any more than the image of her gentle beauty, indelibly stamped on his brain, would leave him. He might spend some days or some weeks in doubt and wretchedness. But from that moment the odds were against him—he was young, and passion had never had her way with him—as seriously against him as against the army that with spies and traitors in its midst moves against an united foe. Not a word that was _convenant_ had passed between them, though so much had passed, when a hasty footstep crossed the forecourt, and stopped at the door. The knocker fell sharply twice, and recalled them to realities. “I—I must go,” she faltered, wresting herself from the spell of his eyes. “I have said what I—I hope you understand, and I—it is time I went.” How her heart was beating! “Oh, no, no!” “Yes, I must go!”