A short distance farther and the wanderers emerge into the open and pause to marvel at the picture spread before them.
It is a wondrous night. Bathed in a radiance that tips with silver every dew-laden spear of grass, the pasture slopes down to a highway, and the brawling of the brook beside it comes to their ears as a strain of music.
Silently the lovers take their way through this fairyland, clamber over the wall into the road, and continue on.
“I am cold,” complains the girl, with a little shiver. Derrick wraps his light overcoat about her shoulders.
The striking of a town clock causes them both to start.
“Where are we?” asks the girl, looking about her in bewilderment. The moon passes behind a cloud. The spell is over.
“Why, this is Ashfield, isn’t it? There is the station, and the church and the—Derrick! Derrick, where have we been wandering? Five miles from home and midnight! What will Louise and father say? We must go home at once.”
“Home,” he repeats, bitterly, pointing to the north. “There is no home yonder for me. Listen, Helen!” He draws her to him fiercely. “If we part now it must be forever. I shall never go back. I cannot go back! Will you not come away with me—somewhere—anywhere? Hark!”
The whistle of the Montreal express sounds from the north.