When the day shall come that we do part," he said softly, and turned to look at me, "if my last words are not 'I love you'-ye'll ken it was because I didna have time.

Lying on the floor, with the carved panels of the ceiling flickering dimly above, I found myself thinking that I had always heretofore assumed that the tendency of eigh­teenth-century ladies to swoon was due to tight stays; now I rather thought it might be due to the idiocy of eighteenth-century men.

"Sassenach." He had called me that from the first; the Gaelic word for outlander, a stranger. An Englishman. First in jest, then in affection.

I have lived through war, and lost much. I know what's worth the fight, and what is not. Honor and courage are matters of the bone, and what a man will kill for, he will sometimes die for, too. And that, O kinsman, is why a woman has broad hips; that bony basin will harbor a man and his child alike. A man's life springs from his woman's bones, and in her blood is his honor christened. For the sake of love alone, I would walk through fire again.

He shook his head, absorbed in one of his feats of memory, those brief periods of scholastic rapture where he lost touch with the world around him, absorbed completely in conjuring up knowledge from all its sources.

Lord, ye gave me a rare woman, and God! I loved her well.

I always thought it would be a simple matter to lie wi' a woman, he said softly. And yet... I want to fall on my face at your feet and worship you"-he dropped the towel and reached out, taking me by the shoulders-"and still I want to force ye to your knees before me, and hold ye there wi' me hands tangled in your hair, and your mouth at my service...and I want both things at the same time, Sassenach.