The man looked at her, in infinite compassion, then came and sat beside her in the hammock.  Rather quietly he took one of her hands and gazed at it, without seeing it, a long time.  Then he pressed it to his lips.

For a breath he held it close to his cheek, his eyes lightless and far away, and she gazed at him in amazement.

“You’d kiss my hand—­after what I did—?”

“After what you didn’t do,” he corrected.  “Please, Beatrice—­don’t blame yourself.  Some way—­I understand things better—­than I used to.  Even if you had killed me—­I don’t see why it wouldn’t have been your right.  I’ve held you here by force.  Yet you didn’t let me drink the stuff.  You knocked it out of my hand.”

And now, for the first time, an inordinate amazement came into his face.  He looked at her intently, yet with no unfriendliness, no passion.  Rather it was with overwhelming wonder.

“You knocked it out of my hands!” he repeated, more loudly.  “Oh, Beatrice—­it’s my turn to beg forgiveness now!  When I was at your mercy, and the cup at my lips—­you spared me.  Why did you do it, Beatrice?”

He gazed at her with growing ardor.  She shook her head.  She simply did not know the reason.

“It’s not your place to feel penitent,” he told her, with infinite sincerity.  “If you had let me take it, you’d have just served me right—­you’d have just paid me back in my own coin.  It was fair enough—­to use every advantage you had.  Good Lord, have you forgotten that I am holding you here by force?  But instead—­you saved me, when you might have killed me—­and won the fight.  All you’ve done is to show yourself the finer clay—­that’s what you’ve done.  God knows I suppose the woman is always finer clay than the man—­yet it comes with a jolt, just the same.  It’s not for you to be down-hearted—­Heaven knows the strength you’ve shown is above any I ever had, or ever will have.  You’ve shown how to feel mercy—­I could never show anything but hate, and revenge.  You’ve shown me a bigger and stronger code than mine.  And there’s nothing—­nothing I can say.”

The tone changed once more to the personal and solicitous.  “But it’s been a big strain on you—­I can see that.  I believe I’d lie here and rest awhile if I were you.  I’ll eat my dinner—­and the fire’s about out too.  That’s the girl—­Beatrice.”

Gently he picked her up, seemingly with no physical effort and laid her in her hammock.  “Then—­you’ll forgive me?” she asked brokenly.

“Good Heavens, I wish there was something to forgive—­so we’d be a little more even.  But you’ve accomplished something, Beatrice—­and I don’t know what it is yet—­I only know you’ve changed me—­and softened me—­as I never dreamed any one in the world could.  Now go to sleep.”

He turned from her, but the food on the table no longer tempted him.  For a full hour he stood before the ashes of the fire, deeply and inextricably bewildered with himself, with life, and with all these thoughts and hopes and regrets that thronged him.  He was like ashes now himself; the fires of his life seemed burned out.  The thought recalled him to the need of cutting fuel for the night’s fire.