CIAN OF THE CHARIOTS

all of a sudden, and kissed her face over and over; until--rallying but a little before searchers came--she made him, by word and gesture, set her free, and stood quivering, palpably insulted.
Yet not so that others should see in that dimness. Nor, as they passed out through it, was her cold silence toward him observable, all being full of query and narration as to the losing of their way. In the sunlit outer air she was quite her daily self again; and he wondered at her containment, which allowed not so much as an angry flush or a meaning glance to appear. Yet he knew well that, whether for punishment or reward, the matter would not thus end between them, and that the memory would dwell through life with him, over stirringly, of those few moments in the mazes of Verulam.
As soon as might be he sought--and found with no great effort--opportunity to make his mercy-beseeching plea. She heard him at first severely and with extreme offence, made obvious; but his passion was permitted to move her, above all by memory-awakening allusions to early days. She must grant, judicially, that he had fared ill with her, and that the fault was not all his own. She hinted of her uncle's pressure, and grave reasons of state and duty, and paused on the very verge of remorsefully hinting her feminine love of brilliancy, and the tempting attributes that begirt the station of the Emperor.

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