“What you say is apt, perhaps,” said he, “and may seem more apt than it is since my name is Martin, though I am no saint.” Then he shook off this mood that he accounted selfish; this mood that would take her—as the wolf takes the lamb—with no thought but for his own hunger.
“No, no!” he cried out. “It were unworthy in me!”
“When I love you, Martin?” she asked him gently.
A moment he stared at her, as if through those clear eyes he would penetrate to the very depths of her maiden soul. Then he sank on to his knees before her as any stripling lover might have done, and kissed her hands in token of the fact that he was conquered.