Brion shook a disconsolate noddle.
‘I blame nobody. We are victims all, in different degree. But of what or whom?’
Seeing him inclined to a fresh fit of abstraction, Raleigh put in hastily:—
‘Well, now it is resolved, I will confess it seemed to me an infatuation passing strange, and accountable to nothing, unless it were the worship of a golden idol. But there I wronged thee, and do ask thy pardon for it.’
‘What else could you think? Yet, thy romantic mystery, forsooth, and poetry reduced to prose! O, God mend us all! Why would you not tell me how she looked to you?’
‘Looks are like gospels, for each to construe according to his faith. Had my interpretation differed from yours, you’d ha’ damned me for a heretic.’
‘But to dream I could have thought that beautiful!’
His expression was so dismayed that Raleigh, after a vain attempt to control himself, went into a shout of laughter.
‘Well——’ began Brion; and his face quivered, and in a moment he was shaking too.
‘This riddle,’ said the soldier presently, gasping himself into sobriety—‘we must seek the clue to it.’