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Rh close, their spirits passed in flame between the shining eyes.

"Oh," she cried again, letting go and shrinking back astounded, staring at him with a pale face of terror. "Oh, what have we done? We don't know each other, not even know each other!" She covered her face. "Something passed between us, it can't be unsaid or undone. What must you—please, please go away! I shall pay for this alone,—oh, the long retribution!" She cried bitterly, bowed down and trembling.

Archer drew near, neither allowed nor forbidden, and tried to console her, like a clumsy child striving to put together the fragments of some priceless thing. "Helen," he said. "Don't cry so. Don't." He awkwardly patted her head, but she only nodded once as if to acknowledge the consolation. The slanting sunlight fell kindly round these two troubled children, aloft on the lonely headland.

"I mean it for good, always," he begged hurriedly. "The time is no matter—long or short—if it had n't been then it would