The heavy coil dropped over his breast down to his knee.

With delicate touches he began to free from the splendid tangle a single strand of glistening white hair.

When she saw it shining like spun silver across the back of his hand, she looked up at him.

With infinite care he searched her face, while she waited with questioning in her tender eyes.
"This," he said, lifting the hand that supported the silver threads, "is the sole evidence that thou hast seen the abomination of desolation." "And that came the night I journeyed away from Jerusalem, without you," she declared.

"But, my Philadelphus," she said, turning herself a little that she might hide her face away from him, "had I stayed with you against my conscience, I had been by this time wholly white." He kissed her.
"I did not expect you to stay," he said.