Well, she had done it--and he swore to himself.

Then he melted at the sight of her, crouched there against the shadows, following his every movement with her soul in her eyes, the tenderest trace of a smile upon her lips.

He vowed he was a reprobate to wrong her so; it was her white soul and her woman's love that spoke.
When she beheld him gazing at her, she tilted her head sidewise daintily, like a little bird.
"Oh, my! What a fierce you are all at once!" Her smile flashed up as if illumined by the leaping blaze, and he crossed quickly, kneeling beside her.
"Dear, wonderful girl," he said, "it is going to be my heart's work to see that you never change and that you remain just what you are.

You can't understand what this means to me, for I, too, was blinded, but the darkness of the night has restored my vision.

Now you must go to sleep; the hours are short and we must be going early." He piled up a great, sweet-scented couch of springy boughs, and fashioned her a pillow out of a bundle of smaller ones, around which he wrapped his khaki coat; then he removed her high-laced boots, and, taking her tiny feet, one in the palm of either hand, bowed his head over them and kissed them with a sense of her gracious purity and his own unworthiness.