woo her again with the tender glances and soft tones and caressing touch of their early acquaintance. Aspatria sorrowfully withdrew herself; she held only repelling palms toward his bending face. She was not coy, he could have overcome coyness; she was cold, and calm, and watchful of him and of herself. Her face and throat paled and blushed, and blushed and paled; her eyes were dilated with feeling; her pretty bow-shaped mouth trembled; she radiated a personality sweet, strong, womanly,—a piquant, woodland, pastoral delicacy, all her own. 144 But after many useless efforts to influence her, he began to despair. He perceived that she still loved him, perhaps better than she had ever done, but that her determination to consider their marriage void had its source in a oneness of mind having no second thoughts and no doubt behind it. The only hope she gave him was in another marriage ceremony which in its splendour and publicity should atone in some measure for the first. He 145 could not contemplate such a confession of his own fault. He could not give Will and Brune Anneys such a triumph. If Aspatria loved him, how could she ask such a humiliating atonement? Aspatria saw the shadow of these reflections on his face. Though he said nothing, she understood it was this struggle that gave the momentary indecision to his pleading. 145 For herself, she did not desire a present reconciliation. She had nursed too long the idea of the Aspatria that was to be, the wise, clever, brilliant woman who was to win over again her husband. She did not like to relinquish this hope for a present gratification, a gratification so much lower in its aim that she now understood that it never could long satisfy a nature so complex and so changeable as Ulfar’s. She therefore refused him his present hope, believing that fate had a far better meeting in store for them. While these thoughts flashed through her mind, she kept her eyes upon the horizon. In that wide-open fixed gaze her 146 loving, troubled soul revealed itself. Ulfar was wondering whether it was worth while to begin his argument all over again, when she said softly: “We must now say farewell. I see the vicar’s maid coming. In a few hours the fell-side will know of our meeting. I must tell Will, myself. I entreat you to leave the dales as soon as possible.” 146 “I will not leave them without you.” “Go to-night. I shall not change what I have said.
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