silent, gazing at him. She was wonderful in her straight hair outlined in light on the blue rectangle of the window. Her face against its background of dark gold was of a pale blue tint and all her form gold and azure. She was like a saint in an illuminated missal. And she was like a young peasant, too, with the unbound hair and the coarse white linen night-dress that came up to her neck and down to her wrists and ankles. It was at last as if he could see her; as if she were a picture set there for him to look at; only even now it was not her face he saw; it was the picture. Then his eyes were drawn to hers. At last he dared to gaze into her eyes. Was it the saint's cold, transfixing repudiation he met there? Or was it the mute, animal acquiescence of the peasant? He could not read the meaning of Marthe Ludérac's gaze; but she stood there, silent, motionless.
Graham shut the door softly behind him and came towards her. The stealthiness of his query was in his tread, and as he thus shut them in, as he thus advanced, she made no sound, no gesture. Then he stretched out his hands to take her and she sprang back from him.
At that every doubt, every thought in Graham merged into the impulse of pursuit. A dark torrent of blood seemed to sweep before his eyes and to obliterate her azure face; but, as he seized her, as it sank before him, he received the meaning of her gaze; and it was not this.
Ah—but this was now his meaning. This was now the meaning of his pounding pulses. She could retreat
