The boy lay stretched at length on the grass, his face to the ground, utterly weary and utterly miserable. He had no strength to tear himself from this unhappy spot and go home; he only wanted to lie there in his pain, which still had a little of sweetness in it as long as he lingered in the place where he had last seen her.
He never moved. His body was as still as on that night in which he had kept his eager vigil, and at last been rewarded. But it was the stillness of exhaustion. No hope was left to him now.
But his ears, trained since his childhood to catch the lightest whispers of nature, and to interpret them, alert in spite of himself, heard something that was not of the life sinking to rest around him. He raised himself suddenly, almost violently, and peered into the darkness, all his senses once more on edge.
And out of the darkness she came, no more than a moth-glimmer flitting towards him. A wild joy filled him, down to the very depths of his being. He sprang up and ran towards her.
She gave a little cry that was half a sob, and flew to his embrace. His arms were around her, and his lips on hers. In all the long hours through which he had yearned for her, and played with the thought of her sweetness, no such blissful end to his waiting had entered his mind as this.
CHAPTER XIII
THE TEMPLE
Her face was wet with her tears, but he could just see her smile glimmering through the darkness. His eyes were as hungry as his lips. That sweet flower-like face, with the tender eyes and the mouth a-quiver—would he ever be able to gaze his fill of it?
She made no effort to draw herself from him, but nestled to him, and poured out a broken sobbing explanation of her absence to which he hardly listened. What did it matter how she had been prevented from coming to him, since she had longed for him as he had longed for her, and was with him now?
He kissed away her tears; she had not returned his kisses since her first unconsidered impelled surrender, but was still sweetly receptive of them. "Oh, I ought not to," she said, smiling at him. "But I do love you, and I have wanted you so."