CHAPTER VIIJean came on Ian suddenly sitting alone in the hall. He was writing at a table in a patch of sunlight. A tall jug of turning bracken stood close to him; the sunlight burned through them both, with a strange transfiguring glory.
Ian looked up as she passed him, and Jean thought of a stag she had caught a glimpse of one day in the park; worsted in a fight, with all the misery of his defeat in his stricken eyes. Had Ian too been locked in a hideous struggle, held, starved, broken, to be at last set free with half his glory gone? She did not speak, but she looked at him with something deeper than pity. They seemed for a long moment to communicate without words, across the pool of light.
Ian's eyes asked her for something--for understanding, or perhaps for recognition. He wanted he
