near mine  or hers  or any that sin has 

touched ! You are pure as the angels ; and ive ! 

Come, for the  of Heaven, come ! / bid you ! " 

A deep  came on her face, her eyes looked at 
him wistfully, her lips trembled slightly ; vaguely and 
sweetly, yet with something of  and wordnetfear, she 
felt that the wordnetdesire which spoke now in his words was 
another than that which had sheltered her child- 
hood. His \n\l was her law, and with one pitying, 



138 STEATHMORE. 

lingering, backward glance to where the nameless 
stranger lay, she went with him, and was borne out by 
him into the tranquil noon, into the silence of the soli- 
tary w^oods. He knew nothing that he did ; he had 
one instinct only, to force her from that presence as 
from some pestilential place, to carry her far away 
down to the fresh waters, into the depths of the fresh 
forests, anywhere  anywhere  from the search of 
that burning gaze, from the breath of that destroying 
life! 

She did no* move, she did not speak ; once she 
looked upward at him with dark di-eaming eyes ; that 
was all ; a strange , half of wordnetfear, half of 
wordnetfear, yet sweet beyond all words, seemed to wordnetfear 
through all