'Now, Winifred, I am going to execute my
threat--I am indeed.'
She put up her hands before her face and said,
'Oh, don't! please don't.'
The action no doubt might seem coquettish, but the tone of her voice
was so genuine, so serious--so agitated even--that I paused:--I
paused in bewilderment and perplexity concerning us both. I observed
that her fingers shook as she held them before her face. That she
should be agitated at seeing me after so long a separation did not
surprise me, I being deeply agitated myself. It was the _nature_ of
her emotion that puzzled me, until suddenly I remembered my mother's
words.
I perceived then that, child of Nature as she still was, some one had
given her a careful training which had transfigured my little Welsh
rustic into a lady. She had not failed to apprehend the anomaly of
her present position--on the moonlit sands with me. Though could not
break free from the old equal relations between us. Winifred had been
able to do so.
'To her,' I thought with shame, 'my offering to kiss her at such a
place and time must have seemed an insult.
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