Her angry, hating eyes haunted me.

I could understand her resentment at my having forced life upon her, but how had I further injured her?
Why should she loathe me?
Could modesty itself be indignant with true service?
How should the proudest woman, conscious of my every action, cherish against me the least sense of disgracing wrong?
How reverently had I not touched her! As a father his motherless child, I had borne and tended her! Had all my labour, all my despairing hope gone to redeem only ingratitude?
"No," I answered myself; "beauty must have a heart! However profoundly hidden, it must be there! The deeper buried, the stronger and truer will it wake at last in its beautiful grave! To rouse that heart were a better gift to her than the happiest life! It would be to give her a nobler, a higher life!" She was ascending a gentle slope before me, walking straight and steady as one that knew whither, when I became aware that she was increasing the distance between us.

I summoned my strength, and it came in full tide.

My veins filled with fresh life! My body seemed to become ethereal, and, following like an easy wind, I rapidly overtook her.
Not once had she looked behind.

Swiftly she moved, like a Greek goddess to rescue, but without haste.