with her, as he used to do. That could never be again,--never. _The man
that he had killed?_ Whatever that meant to him, his artist eye took
keen note of Dode, as she knelt there, in spite of remorse or pain
below: how her noble, delicate head rose from the coarse blue drapery,
the dark rings of her curling hair, the pale, clear-cut face, the
burning lips, the eyes whose earthly soul was for the man who lay there.
He knew that, yet he never loved her so fiercely as now,--now, when her
father's blood lay between them.

"Did you find him?" she asked, without looking up. "I ought to have done
it. I wish I had done that. I wish I had given him his life. It was my
right."

One would think she was talking in her sleep.

"Why was it your right?" he asked, quietly.

"Because I loved him."

Gaunt raised his hand to his head suddenly.

"Did you, Dode? I had a better right than that. Because I hated him."

"He never harmed you, David Gaunt,"--with as proud composure as that
with which a Roman wife would defend her lord.

"I saved his life. Dode, I'm trying to do right: God knows I am. But I
hated him; he took from me the only thing that would have loved me."

She looked up timidly, her face growing crimson.