Her weakness overwhelmed her and burying her face in the folds of her mantle, she wept.
After a dismayed silence, he bent over her and said with a quiver of distress in his voice: "I--I have work, here, to do, but I shall take thee out of the city for better refuge--" That she should seem to be grieving over the nature of the shelter given her, stirred her deeply.

She half rose and with the light shining on her face, filled with gratitude in spite of her tears, took his hand in both of hers and pressed it with pathetic insistence.
He understood her.
He laid a hand unsteady with its tremor of delight and young eagerness upon the vitta and it slipped off her hair.

As it dropped, the subtle warm fragrance of the heavy locks, now braided in maidenly style, reached him; the liveliness of her relaxed young figure communicated itself to him without his touch; all the invitation of her helplessness swept him to the very edge of abandoning his restraint.
On his dark face a transformation occurred.

All the hardness, even his years and his experience vanished from him and a soft recovering flush faintly colored his cheeks.

In that sudden bloom of beauty in his face was stamped a realization of the far progress of his triumph.