‘Keep still. Do not move the wheel again for your life. Now! Step out without a sound. We must go back the way we came, and you must ride off, while I lie hid in the wood.’
They moved like cats. There was no difficulty about regaining the branch from the banked-up ground against the wall, and in a minute they were across, and had slipped into the covert of the trees on the farther side. And there they stood to part.
‘Fare thee well, dear Brion.’
‘Is that all, dear Joan?’
‘Why, what can I have more to say but to thank thee?’
‘Thanks are for lips; yet the sweetest are without words. For what thou hast taught me I owe thee a thousand kisses.’
‘Nay, the saving grace of an error is in the teaching one not to repeat it. If I know my peril, and avoid it, will you, who love me, lead me into it again? That is not to be my knight.’
‘Dear Joan, forgive me.’
‘Yes, Brion.’
They parted, with a sweet gravity. Were they not lovely serious, the pretty things, and did they not deserve the best a kind Fate could allot them?