For Ian sleep was out of the question; and he lay there watching the firelight dancing on the faces of the slumbering children, the one beautiful with a robust health and well cut features and strongly built limbs, finely proportioned throughout; the other beautiful entirely beyond any ordinary beauty, with an extreme delicacy and subtlety in every line of her face as he had already noticed in her figure, yet never even suggesting the least touch of weakness. He had never seen such hair, which seemed to cover the bed. Its rich deep colour glowed with an extraordinary lustre and he noticed that her skin, unlike that of most people with red hair, was absolutely clear and marked by a strange translucent quality that was unique. One small arm was lying out on the coverlet with the sleeve tucked up. He had not realised before that a child’s arm could show so much variety of form and modelled surface and yet retain the essential slenderness and daintiness of childhood. She might well have been some fairy princess sleeping among the flowers. Aline’s beauty undoubtedly had about it something supernatural. It was all in keeping with her manner and character. There was an atmosphere of another world about her of which every one who met her sooner or later became aware. It could not be put into words and could not be analysed. In a sense it was unnatural, but so far from repelling any one it had about it a mysterious, almost magical fascination that was irresistible. Only the basest natures failed to be drawn by it, and even in their cases it was not that they did not feel it, but that they consciously withstood it as a power with which their whole nature was at variance. Ian was devoutly glad that she was no worse and offered up a prayer of thankfulness that she was at least safe. As he looked at her he recalled her soft, not very pronounced, musical Scots accent, and his thoughts turned to the land of his birth. Her face too!--why had he not noticed it before, how strangely like it was in certain aspects to the face of his dreams, that still followed him wherever he went, although he had not seen it for thirteen years? He had, however, reluctantly to admit that this mere child’s face was even more beautiful. After all she too had really been only a child, although rather more than a couple of years older than himself, when he had worshipped her with all the fervour of a boy’s adoration and had suddenly lost sight of her when her parents had unexpectedly taken her away to be married. But the face had lived with him day and night, and no other face had ever come between him and his vision. Nor had the discovery long afterward,--that she had died soon after her child was born, ever inclined him to look elsewhere.