The terrible look in his eyes was gone, gone was the mocking smile of the night before. Pity, divine pity, moved him.
"Donelle!"
"Yes, Mr. Richard Alton." The poor girl strove to be her teasing self, but her lips trembled and suddenly a strange, almost an awful, dignity and detachment overcame her. Standing with clasped hands, in her nun-like garb, she seemed to have taken farewell of the world that women crave.
"What are you doing, Donelle, by that cross?" Norval did not draw near, and a distance of several feet separated them.
"Thinking and praying."
"Thinking what? And praying for what?"
The trouble in his eyes met the trouble in hers and called for simple truth.
"I was thinking of how you looked at me yesterday when I was in Tom Gavot's hut and of how you made me suffer last night. And I was praying to God to help me, help me to stop loving you."
So naïve and direct were the words that they made Norval breathe hard. In a flash he saw the true nature of the girl before him. She was old, gravely, inheritedly old; and she was, too, a young and pitiful child.
People had only touched the outer surface of her character and personality. Alone she had learned the primitive and desperate lessons of womanhood.