Then some dreadful thought seemed to strike her, for she moaned as though in pain, and said, 'A mirror! Swift, bring me a mirror!' I gave her one, and rising on her arm, eagerly she scanned her face in the dim light of the shadowed room, then let the plate of burnished gold fall, and sank back with a faint and happy cry: 'I feared,' she said, 'I feared that I had become hideous as those are whom the pestilence has smitten, and that you would cease to love me, than which it had been better to die.' 'For shame,' I said.

'Do you then think that love can be frightened away by some few scars ?' 'Yes,' Otomie answered, 'that is the love of a man; not such love as mine, husband.

Had I been thus--ah! I shudder to think of it--within a year you would have hated me.

Perhaps it had not been so with another, the fair maid of far away, but me you would have hated.

Nay, I know it, though I know this also, that I should not have lived to feel your hate.
Oh! I am thankful, thankful.' Then I left her for a while, marvelling at the great love which she had given me, and wondering also if there was any truth in her words, and if the heart of man could be so ungrateful and so vile.