He looked, smiling, down on her, and she up at him. Some sense of an indefinable pressure, of a helpless entreaty caught at his heart with a shock. And the next moment he had bent his head lower, and kissed her lips.
The instant he had done so, the awful rapture of that profanation smote him scarlet. He thought he must have alienated her beyond forgiveness.
‘O, Joan!’ he said—‘I was mad.’
She broke from him, he supposed to leave the copse and his presence without another word. But, to his wonder and relief, she seemed as if unconscious of the offence. Only, had it been light, he might have seen how the rose of pudency had flushed suddenly to the very nape of her neck.
‘Come,’ she said, in a voice that was hardly audible.
He could scarce believe his ears; but his every vein was throbbing with the ecstasy of a new revelation. He followed her, and in a moment they came down to the big tree, and stood together by the side of the moat.
The tree was like a monstrous devil-fish, throwing out a swarm of tentacles, smooth and sinuous, which were heavily interlaced with others projected from the farther bank, so that altogether they formed with their sombre foliage a dense dark canopy shrouding in the black water. Of these tentacles, one, the biggest, reared itself across the moat and over the wall beyond, on which it rested, forming a sloping bridge, with at least a reasonable foothold for a passenger supporting himself by certain minor branches which could be used as handrails. It was a quite feasible way, though uninviting, and the boy waited for his companion’s verdict on it.
‘Well?’ he whispered presently.
She had been silent, because it was her own voice she feared after that conscious contact; but now she rallied her self-possession.
‘I am going across, Brion. Where is the well-house?’