John’s wisdom stood by him nobly.  He knew he could neither explain successfully nor beg forgiveness.  He simply said:  “I cannot remain and look you in the face.  If I dare make any request, it is that despite all you have heard from my lips you will still believe that I love you, and that in all my life I have never loved any one so dearly.  There is no other woman for me.”

“You doubtless spoke the same false words to the other two score women,” said Dorothy.  Tears and sobs were playing sad havoc with her powers of speech.

“Farewell, Mistress Vernon,” replied John.  “I should be shameless if I dared ask you to believe any word I can utter.  Forget, if possible, that I ever existed; forget me that you may not despise me.  I am unworthy to dwell even in the smallest of your thoughts.  I am altogether base and contemptible.”

“N-o-o,” sighed Dorothy, poutingly, while she bent low her head and toyed with the gold lace of my cloak.

“Farewell,” said John.  He took a step or two backward from her.

“You are over-eager to leave, it seems to me,” said the girl in an injured tone.  “I wonder that you came at all.”  John’s heart was singing hosanna.  He, however, maintained his voice at a mournful pitch and said:  “I must go.  I can no longer endure to remain.”  While he spoke he moved toward his horse, and his head was bowed with real shame as he thought of the pitiable fool he had made of himself.  Dorothy saw him going from her, and she called to him softly and reluctantly, “John.”

He did not hear her, or perhaps he thought best to pretend that he did not hear, and as he moved from her the girl became desperate.  Modesty, resentment, insulted womanhood and injured pride were all swept away by the stream of her mighty love, and she cried again, this time without hesitancy or reluctance, “John, John.”  She started to run toward him, but my cloak was in her way, and the sword tripped her feet.  In her fear lest John might leave her, she unclasped the sword-belt from her waist and snatched the cloak from her shoulders.  Freed from these hindrances, she ran toward John.

“John, do not leave me.  Do not leave me.”  As she spoke, she reached an open space among the trees and John turned toward her.  Her hat had fallen off, and the red golden threads of her hair, freed from their fastenings, streamed behind her.  Never before had a vision of such exquisite loveliness sped through the moonbeams.  So entrancing was her beauty to John that he stood motionless in admiration.  He did not go to meet her as he should have done, and perhaps as he would have done had his senses not been wrapped in benumbing wonderment.  His eyes were unable to interpret to his brain all her marvellous beauty, and his other senses abandoning their proper functions had hastened to the assistance of his sight He saw, he heard, he felt her loveliness.  Thus occupied he did not move, so Dorothy ran to him and fell upon his breast.