The eyes that fell were mine. I was tongue-tied. Here was an opening but how could I say that I was in the same case. How could I claim that the risk I had run was to be compared with that which Tom had run. Or how could I claim at all as a debt—what I wanted. Perish the thought! So I went on eating, silent and stupid, thinking of the few, few hours that separated us from Camden, thinking of the long, long time that would follow. She said one or two things disjointedly; that her father would free Tom, of course; that he was a very clever negro, and wonderful as a bone-setter. “I should know that,” I said. “Yes,” she assented; and I stole a glance at her. She had found means to plait up her hair and arrange her dress. She was another creature now from the desperate, driven, tragical girl who had clung to me that morning, whose heart had beaten for an instant against mine, whose pistol at this moment lay hard and cold on my breast. My courage sank lower and lower. Of that girl I had had hopes, on her I had had a claim. But this one was a stranger. Presently we had finished, and she rose and went down to the river to wash her hands. When she had done this she turned and came up the bank again, swinging her hat in her hand, and softly crooning some song of praise. The sun flamed from the water behind her, and out of that light she came towards me, tall and slender and gracious, and with such a glory of thanksgiving in her face, that my pride, or whatever it was, that stood between her and me, and kept me silent, gave way and broke! What matter what she thought? What matter if she trod me under foot, held me cheap, disdained me? What matter? I went to meet her. “You did that for Tom,” I said. “Have you nothing for me? For me, too?” Her grave eyes met mine. She was nearly of a height with me. “For you,” she said, “I have all that you choose to ask.” “Yourself?” I cried. “If it be your pleasure.” And that, it may be thought, should have satisfied me, who an instant before had despaired. But so presumptuous is success I was already jealous, already exigent. “Ah, not as a debt?” I cried. “If you cannot give me your love, Con?” “I cannot,” she answered with smiling eyes. “It has been given to you this month past.” Then as she hung back from me, blushing divinely, “They have touched Tom’s black hands,” she said. “God bless them for it!” I answered. Later she told me that she had loved me from the hour I had kept silence as to her part in the outrage at the Bluff. “I was ashamed, oh, I was horribly ashamed of it,” she said. “I knew that neither my father nor my god-father would have done that! Yet, I am not sure that it was not earlier than that? I think it was your mention of the soldier’s wife when you were yourself in—in danger—that clung to my memory, and would not be shaken off, and—” “Poor Simms!” I said. “And I once envied him!” * * * * *