Stanief looked at her. Like one of her own slim flowers she stood, her shimmering white morning dress leaving her round throat and arms bare. The full soft hair was caught in a great coil low on her neck, she wore no jewel except the slender gold chain and cross gleaming through the lace at her bosom.
"Why are you afraid of me?" he asked abruptly. "Why do you shrink from me as if my touch were pain? What has come between us, Iría?"
"Nothing, monseigneur," her fingers inter-laced in feverish nervousness.
"Nothing? Iría, Iría, will you tell me now to take you with me into my exile?"
"Yes, monseigneur," came the low reply, but her head drooped.
"And you think I would accept the sacrifice? You think—" He checked himself with a violent effort.
"I am sorry," she responded confusedly. "I—I have not changed."
"Then it is I?"
"No, no; please let me go, monseigneur."
"It is I who will go," he answered, shaken out of self-mastery for once. "Iría, I do not know who awakened you, who showed you the truth, perhaps it was my kindly cousin. But it is clear that you have seen. Iría, was your trust also so weak that it went down before a breath? Because I loved you, must you shrink from me? Child, I loved you the first day that you gave me your shy friendship, I loved you all the months afterward, and was my care of you less careful for that? If you could have continued in your ignorance, would I have failed you?"