Then they went deadly white, and it seemed that time and life and the very world had paused in its relentless progress towards eternity.

For there stood the object of her thoughts and sighs, sudden and unexpected, as though the earth had cast him up on to her surface.
His thin lips were parted in a smile that softened wondrously the harshness of his face, and his eyes seemed then to her alight with kindness.

A moment's pause there was, during which she sought her voice, and when she had found it, all that she could falter was: "Sir, how came you here?
They told me that you rode to London." "Why, so I did.

But on the road I chanced to halt, and having halted I discovered reason why I should return." He had discovered a reason.

She asked herself breathlessly what might that reason be, and finding herself no answer to the question, she put it next to him.
He drew near to her before replying.