The evening was still bright, and the daylight fell upon her from a window above the hall door.
"Shall I do ?" she asked, with a smile.
The staircase was paneled with a dark polished wood, and she stood out from that somber background, a white figure, delicate and dainty and wholesome, from the silver buckle on her satin slipper to the white flower she had placed in her hair.

Her face, with its remarkable gentleness, its suggestion of purity as of one unspotted by the world, was turned to him with a confident appeal.

Her clear gray eyes rested quietly on his.

Yet she saw his face change.

It seemed that a spasm of pain or revolt shook him.