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. The very fact of my attempting to do so must have seemed to indicate an offensive consciousness of the difference of our social positions. It must have, seemed to show that I recognised a distinction between the drunken organist's daughter and a lady.'
I saw now, indeed, that she felt this keenly; and I knew that it was nothing but the sweetness of her nature, coupled with the fond recollection of the old happy days, that restrained that high spirit of hers, and prevented her from giving expression to her indignation and disgust.
All this was shown by the appealing look on her sweet, fond face, and I was touched to the heart.
'Winifred--Miss Wynne,' I said, 'I beg your pardon most sincerely. The shadow-dance has been mainly answerable for my folly. You did look so exactly the little Winifred, my heart's sister, that I felt it impossible to treat you otherwise than as that dear child-friend of years ago.'
'I felt sure it was so,' she said. 'But it is a relief that you have said it.' And the tears came to her eyes.
'Thank you, Winifred, for having pardoned me. I feel that you would have forgiven no one else as you have forgiven me. I feel that you would not have forgiven any one else than your old child-companion, whom on a memorable occasion you threatened to hit, and then had not the heart to do so.'
'I don't think I _could_ hit _you_,' said she, in a meditative tone of perfect unconsciousness as to the bewitching import of her speech.
'Don't you think you could?' I said, drawing nearer, but governing my passion.
'No,' said she, looking now for the first time with those wide-open confiding eyes which, as a child, were the chief characteristic of her face. 'I don't think I could hit you, whatever you did.'
'Couldn't you, Winifred?' I said, coming still nearer, in order to drink to the full the wonder of her beauty, the thrill at my heart bringing, as I felt, a pallor to my cheek. 'Don't you think you could hit your old playfellow, Winifred?'