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292 leave you, and now that I am with you I cannot give you up to Pierre le Rouge."

She cried: "What will you have of me?"

He answered with a ring of melancholy: "Friendship? No, I can't take those white hands—mine are so red. All I can do is to lurk about you like a shadow—a shadow with a sting that strikes down all other men who come near you."

She said: "For all men have told me about you, I know you could not do that."

"Mary, I tell you there are things about me, and possibilities, about which I don't dare to question myself."

"You have guarded me like a brother. Be one to me still; I have never needed one so deeply!"

"A brother? Mary, if your eyes were less blue or your hair less golden I might be; but you are too beautiful to be only that to me."

"Listen to me—"

But she stopped in the midst of her speech, because a white head loomed beside the dim form. It was the head of a horse, with pricking ears, which now nosed the shoulder of its master, and she saw the firelight glimmering in the great eyes.

"Your horse," she said in a trembling voice, "loves you and trusts you."

"It is the only thing which has not feared me. When it was a colt it came out of the herd and nosed my hand. It is the only thing which has not fought me, as all men have done as you are doing now, Mary."

The wind that blew up the gorge came in gusts,