It is a swift, sharp spasm, that passes away as quickly as it came, and which leaves the girl for several minutes afterward somewhat dazed. Footsteps echo in the road.
“The result?” eagerly, anxiously queries the girl as Derrick reaches her side.
He must have walked swiftly. He is breathing hard and his face is pale as the moonlight. Or is it the reflection of that light?
“Come away from here, for God’s sake!” he exclaims in a harsh, unnatural voice, half-dragging her into the road. “I beg your pardon; I did not mean to be rough,” he adds, as the astonished eyes of the girl look into his. “Will you come for a walk, dear?” And as she follows, mechanically, wonderingly, he walks swiftly away from the village.
“I am all out of breath,” she protests, after a few moments of the fierce pace he has set. And they stop to rest at a spring beside the road.
“You have quarreled with father,” asserts the girl, half questioningly; but Derrick remains silent.
He stops suddenly, and, holding her in his arms, smooths back the dark ringlets from her moist brow. “Helen, darling, do not press me for an answer to-night. Let us be happy in the present. God knows it may not be for long.” He presses a passionate kiss upon the girl’s unresisting and unresponsive lips, and then lifts to the moonlight a face as troubled as the tossing river behind the dusky willows. As he releases her he extends his arm toward the ball of silver that is wheeling up the heavens. “See!” he cries. “The moon is up and it is a glorious night. Shall we follow that pathway of silver over the hills and far away?”
A loving look is her willing assent.
The witchery that the moon is said to exert o’er mortals must be more than a poet’s myth. A strange peace has come upon the girl. Her senses are exalted. She seems to be walking on air. Nor does she now break upon the silence of her companion, whose agitation has been replaced by a singular calm.
What a stillness, yet what a busy world claims the woods they are crossing to-night! The crawling of a beetle through the dead leaves is distinctly heard, and a thousand small noises that the day never hears fill the forest with a strange music.