Alister stopped and turned to her. The last gleam of the west was reflected from her eyes, and all the sadness of the fading light seemed gathered into them.
"My child!" he said, all that was fatherly in the chief rising at the sight, "who has been making you unhappy?"
"You," she answered, looking him in the face.
"How? I do not understand!" he returned, gazing at her bewildered.
"You have just paid me a compliment—a thing you never did before—a thing I never heard before from any but a fool! How could you say I was beautiful! You know I am not beautiful! It breaks my heart to think you could say what you didn't believe!"
"Mercy!" answered the chief, "if I said you were beautiful, and to my eyes you were not, it would yet be true; for to my heart, which sees deeper than my eyes, you are more beautiful than any other ever was or ever will be. I know you are not beautiful in the world's meaning, but you are very lovely—and it was lovely I said you were!"
"Lovely because you love me? Is that what you meant?"
"Yes, that and more. Your eyes are beautiful, and your hair is beautiful, and your expression is lovely. But I am not flattering you—I am not even paying you compliments, for those things are not yours; God made them, and has given them to me!"
She put her hand in his arm again, and there was no more love-making.
"But Mercy," said the chief, when they had walked some distance without speaking, "do you think you could live here always, and never see London again?"