And there fell a little silence between them as they walked on, swinging hands above the turf, gravely contented.
They had had to spend the day together thus. It seemed to Gwenna that all her life before had been just a waiting for this day.
Below the upland on which they swung along, grey figures on the green, there lay other wide hill-spaces, spread as with turf-green carpets, on which the squares of mellowing, golden-brown autumn woods seemed rugs and skins cast down; below these again stretched the further valley with the marsh, with the silver loops and windings of the river, and the little white moving caterpillar of smoke from the distant train. There was also a blue haze above the slate roofs of a town.
But here, in this sun-washed loneliness far above, here was their world; hers and his.
They walked, sometimes climbing a crest where stag's-horn moss branched and spread through the springy turf beneath their feet, sometimes dipping into a hollow, for two miles and more. They could have walked there for half a day and seen no face except that of a tiny mountain sheep, cropping among the gorse; heard no voice but those of the calling plovers, beating their wings in the free air. Then, passing a gap in two hills, they came quite suddenly upon the cottage and the lake.
The sheet of water, silent, deserted, reflected the warm blue of the afternoon sky and the deep green of the overhanging boughs of great hassock-shaped bushes that covered two islands set upon its breast.
"Rhododendron bushes. When they're in blossom they're all simply covered with flowers, pink and rose-colour, and reflected in the water! It is so lovely," Gwenna told the lover beside her. "Oh, Paul! You must come here again and see that with me in the spring!"
On the further bank was another jungle of rhododendron and lauristinus, half-hiding the grey stone walls and the latticed windows of the square cottage, a fishing box of a place that had evidently been built for some one who loved solitude.
Paul Dampier peered in through one of the cobwebby lattices. Just inside on the sill there stood, left there long since, a man's shaving-tackle. Blue mildew coated the piece of soap that lay in the dish. Further in he caught a glimpse of dusty furniture, of rugs thrown down on a wooden floor, of a man's old coat on a peg. A wall was decorated with sets of horns, with a couple of framed photographs, with old fishing-rods.
"Make a jolly decent billet, for some one, this," said Paul.