arms, blindly.

There was a sudden silence. This was not the cheery, healthful Grey
Gurney of a moment before, this woman with the cold terror creeping out
in her face. He caught her hands and held them.

"I don't know for what," she moaned. "He did it. He is good."

He watched the slow change in her face: it made his hands tremble as
they held hers. No longer a child, but a woman whose soul the curse had
touched. Miriam, leprous from God's hand, might have thus looked up to
Him without the camp. Blecker drew her closer. Was she not his own? He
would defend her against even this God, for whom he cared but little.

"What has been done to you, child?"

She shook herself free, speaking in a fast, husky whisper.

"Do not touch me, Dr. Blecker. It was no school-girl's whim that kept me
from you. I am not like other women. I am not worthy of any man's love."

"I think I know what you mean," he said, gravely. "I know your story,
Grey. They made you live a foul lie once. I know it all. You were a
child then."

She had gone still farther from him, holding by the trunk of a dead
tree, her face turned towards the water. The black sough of wind from
it lifted her hair, and dampened her forehead. The man's brain grew
clearer, stronger, somehow, as he looked at her; as thought does in the
few electric moments of life when sham and conventionality crumble down