"It is nothing: I am very foolish—but I—I thought you were badly hurt—for the moment that you might even be—killed!"
He staggered to his feet and caught her hand and held it, looking at her with that look in a man's eyes which is stronger and fiercer than fire, and yet softer than water; the look which goes straight to a woman's heart.
"And you cared—cared so much?" he said, in a voice so low that she could scarcely hear it, hushed by the awe and wonder of passion.
She tried to withdraw her hand, biting her lips, setting them tightly, in her battle for calmness and her old hauteur and indifference; but he held the small hand firmly, felt it quiver and tremble, saw the violet eyes raised to his with a troubled wonder in them; and her name sprang to his lips:
"Ida!" he breathed.
CHAPTER XIV.
"Ida!" The name had sprung from his lips, from his heart, almost unconsciously; it did not seem strange to him, for he knew, as he spoke it, that he had called her so in his thoughts, that it had hovered on his lips ever since he had heard it. But to her—Who shall describe the subtle emotion which thrills through a girl's heart when she hears, for the first time from a strange man's lips, the name whose use hitherto has been reserved for her kith and kin?
She stood erect, but with her head bent, her eyes fixed on the ground, the name, his voice, ringing in her ears; her heart was beating almost painfully, as if with weight of a novel kind of fear, that yet was not altogether fear. Stafford looked at her with the man's, the lover's eagerness, but her face told him nothing. She was so ignorant of the very A B C of love that there was no start of surprise, no word or movement which might guide him; but his instant thought was that she was offended, angry.
"Forgive me!" he said. "You are angry because I called you—Ida! It was wrong and presumptuous; but I have learned to think of you by your name—and it slipped out. Are you very angry? Ah, you knew why I called you so? Don't you know that—I love you!"
She raised her eyes for a moment but did not look at him; they were fixed dreamily on the great hills in the distance, then drooped again, and her brows came together, her lips straightened with a still more marked expression of trouble, doubt, and wonder.