blindly, now, and clumsily past all belief, my hand was shaking so absurdly.

If my face were now as red as it was hot, hers, on the contrary, had become very strange and still and white. For a moment I seemed to read distrust, scorn, even hatred, in her level stare, and something of fear, too, in every quickening breath that moved the scarlet mantle on her breast. Then, in a flash, she had turned her back on me and was standing there in the grey dawn, with both hands over her face, straight and still as a young pine. But my ring was shining on her finger.

Emotion of a nature to which I was an utter stranger was meddling with my breath and pulses, now checking, now speeding both so that I stood with mind disconcerted in a silly sort of daze.