The rosy flush which the harvest sun had put into her cheeks deepened. Her dark, mysterious eyes lit up marvellously.
"Alfred—you!" she cried. "I was just thinking about you. And I had no idea you were so near!"
A feeling of guilt oppressed the King. The shining happiness, the radiant trust, of Judith's face smote him like a rebuke.
Slowly, he advanced across the clearing, and halted beside her chair.
What was it he wanted to say? What could he say?
Then, suddenly, words came to him.
"You know—who I am," he said.
Quite unconsciously, he used the same words which he had used with Uncle Bond; but he used them now with a difference. With Uncle Bond the words had been a challenge. To Judith, he offered them as an apology.
A shadow obscured the radiance of Judith's face; but her glance did not waver. It was as if she were meeting something for which she had long been prepared.
"I have always known," she acknowledged.