"So long as you keep quiet, I'll stand out."
"Oh, Richard, no mouse was ever so quiet as I will be. Now, say, was it all for my sake?"
"What else could it be?"
"I don't know. Only it is so strange. And Richard! Richard! I will die before—You understand—I would die rather than harm you."
"That is my own brave lass. Now you are like yourself, and we can part friends—better friends than ever."
"Part! It is not so late."
"But the moon is up, and you will be seen by the village people. They must have no jibes to cast on my wife when you and I are wed."
The girl's eyes flashed in the moonlight, which came broadly through a glass door that led upon the old wooden balcony.
A smile crept over Storms' subtle lips. He was rather proud of his victory over this beautiful Amazon. The brilliant loveliness of her face in the softening light was so like that of Ruth Jessup, that he astonished the handsome virago by taking her head between his hands, and kissing her with something like tenderness.
His heart recoiled from this caress the next moment, as the prodigal son may have loathed the husks he eat, when he was famishing for corn; but Judith sat down upon the hard wooden seat, and covering her face with both hands, broke into a passion of delicious tears.