* * * * * * *
A sound, slight but distinct—the rattle of gravel beneath a light foot, the rustle—indescribable—of a woman's apparel—and he lifted his dim eyes to see Rona standing in the doorway. With no word spoken she slipped inside the hut, round behind the bunches of sticks, to where he sat. "David—here I am," she said, timidly.
He made her no reply, but let his craving eyes rest upon her. She flushed, and began to tremble. His evident misery pained her. Also, the surprise was not only upon his side. This young man was not the ragged, famished outcast who had grappled with her in his weakness and extremity, dragging her back to safety as she overhung the abyss. She, too, was smitten with the feeling that they were strangers.
Into his soul were thronging all kinds of desires and consciousnesses, for the first time. He wished he were shaved. He wished he had a better suit; he wished he were handsome; he longed to be rich.
True, the disfiguring blue glasses were hidden in his pocket; but even so, what kind of a champion was he, dusty pilgrim that he was, for this princess?
He stood up awkwardly, and his face was dyed crimson, with a shame the more awful because it was wholly inarticulate. His first words left his lips before he had time to consider them.
"Forgive me. I ought not to have come."
She gazed at him pitifully, her trouble growing. "Ought not to have come? Oh, David, why? I—I thought you were—my brother."
She was overswept with a sudden consciousness—much like that which had just overtaken the young man. After all, what was the link that bound them? A few hours of common danger, of frantic flight? She felt curiously friendless, and as though she had lived these past weeks under a comforting delusion. "Why ought you not to have come?"
He said, brokenly, "I have no right." Then, with passion, "I have no right, have I? You are happy, and among kind people of your own class. You have no need of a ruffian like me."