Chapter 33

After they had dined they sat together in the long Highland twilight
before her window in the Tower room where he had found her sitting when
he arrived. Her work basket was near her and she took a piece of sheer
lawn from it and began to embroider. And he sat and watched her draw
delicate threads through the tiny leaves and flowers she was making. So
he might have watched Alixe if she had been some unroyal girl given to
him in one of life's kinder hours. She seemed to draw near out of the
land of lost shadows as he sat in the clear twilight stillness and
looked on. As he might have watched Alixe.

The silence, the paling daffodil tints of the sky, the non-existence of
any other things than calm and stillness seemed to fill his whole being
as a cup might be filled by pure water falling slowly. She said nothing
and did not even seem to be waiting for anything. It was he who first
broke the rather long silence and his voice was quite low.

"Do you know you are very good to me?" he said. "How did you learn to be
so kind to a man--with your quietness?"

He saw the hand holding her work tremble a very little. She let it fall
upon her knee, still holding the embroidery. She leaned forward slightly
and in her look there was actually something rather like a sort of timid
prayer.

"Please let me," she said. "Please let me--if you can!"

"Let you!" was all that he could say.

"Let me try to help you to rest--to feel quiet and forget for just a
little while. It's such a small thing. And it's all I can ever _try_ to
do."

"You do it very perfectly," he answered, touched and wondering.

"You have been kind to me ever since I was a child--and I did not know,"
she said. "Now I know, because I understand. Oh! _will_ you forgive me?
_Please_--will you?"

"Don't, my dear," he said. "You were a baby. _I_ understood. That
prevented there being anything to forgive--anything."

"I ought to have loved you as I loved Mademoiselle and Dowie." Her eyes
filled with tears. "And I think I hated you. It began with Donal," in a
soft wail. "I heard Andrews say that his mother wouldn't let him know me
because you were my mother's friend. And then as I grew older--"

"Even if I had known what you thought I could not have defended myself,"
he answered, faintly smiling. "You must not let yourself think of it. It
is nothing now."

The hand holding the embroidery lifted itself to touch her breast. There
was even a shade of awe of him in her eyes.

"It is something to me--and to Donal. You have never defended yourself.
You endure