“Peter.”

“Yes, Charmian?”

“Did you—­” She paused, plucking nervously at the grass, and looking away from me.

“Well, Charmian?”

“Did you—­hear—­” Again she broke off, and still her head was averted.

“I heard your voice calling to me from a great way off, and so—­I came, Charmian.”

“Were you conscious when—­when I—­found you?”

“No,” I answered; “I was lying in a very deep, black, pit.”  Here she looked at me again.

“I—­I thought you—­were—­dead, Peter.”

“My soul was out of my body—­until you recalled it.”

“You were lying upon your back, by the hedge here, and—­oh, Peter! your face was white and shining in the moonlight—­and there was—­blood upon it, and you looked like one that is—­dead!” and she shivered.

“And you have brought me back to life,” said I, rising; but, being upon my feet, I staggered giddily, to hide which, I laughed, and leaned against a tree.  “Indeed,” said I, “I am very much alive still, and monstrously hungry—­you spoke of a rabbit, I think—­”

“A rabbit!” said Charmian in a whisper, and as I met her eye I would have given much to have recalled that thoughtless speech.

“I—­I think you did mention a rabbit,” said I, floundering deeper.

“So, then—­you deceived me, you lay there and deceived me—­with your eyes shut, and your ears open, taking advantage of my pity—­”

“No, no—­indeed, no—­I thought myself still dreaming; it—­it all seemed so unreal, so—­so beyond all belief and possibility and—­” I stopped, aghast at my crass folly, for, with a cry, she sprang to her feet, and hid her face in her hands, while I stood dumbfounded, like the fool I was.  When she looked up, her eyes seemed to, scorch me.

“And I thought Mr. Vibart a man of honor—­like a knight of his old-time romances, high and chivalrous—­oh!  I thought him a —­gentleman!”

“Instead of which,” said I, speaking (as it were), despite myself, “instead of which, you find me only a blacksmith—­a low, despicable fellow eager to take advantage of your unprotected womanhood.”  She did not speak standing tall and straight, her head thrown back; wherefore, reading her scorn of me in her eyes, seeing the proud contempt of her mouth, a very demon seemed suddenly to possess me, for certainly the laugh that rang from my lip, proceeded from no volition of mine.

“And yet, madam,” my voice went on, “this despicable blacksmith fellow refused one hundred guineas for you to-day.”

“Peter!” she cried, and shrank away from me as if I had threatened to strike her.

“Ah!—­you start at that—­your proud lip trembles—­do not fear, madam—­the sum did not tempt him—­though a large one.”

“Peter!” she cried again, and now there was a note of appeal in her voice.

“Indeed, madam, even so degraded a fellow as this blacksmith could not very well sell that which he does not possess—­could he?  And so the hundred guineas go a-begging, and you are still —­unsold!” Long before I had done she had covered her face again, and, coming near, I saw the tears running out between her fingers and sparkling as they fell.  And once again the devil within me laughed loud and harsh.  But, while it still echoed, I had flung myself down at her feet.