“Not at this stage, I’m afraid,” he said, with a smile that was meant to be reassuring, but was only sad. “You know I have a certain code of my own.”
“It would be a cruel one if it was not yours,” she answered. But there was nothing of resentment in the tone, only pride, admiration, an intense glory of possession. Nor did she intend to abandon the argument, only to postpone it.
As they had said, they had known from the very first that they belonged to each other. It was as surely a case of coming together as the meeting of two converging rivers; and the process had been as easy, as natural. What had drawn her towards him—apart from his physical attractions, which were not slight, and of which, to do him justice, he was free from any consciousness—was his total dissimilarity to any other man she had ever met. She had told him so more than once—and the reply had been deprecatory. Other men got on, he declared, while he—only seemed to get back; dissimilarity, therefore, was rather a hindrance than a thing to plume oneself upon.
“We are nearly there now,” he said, regretfully, as the track they had been pursuing here merged in a broader main road.
“Yes. But what a day we have had. Hasn’t it been too sweet?”
“Too sweet indeed! A day to look back upon to the very end of one’s life.”
A couple of miles further and they topped a rise. In the stillness the sudden barking of dogs was borne to their ears. It came from where two or three iron roofs glinted in the moonlight some three-quarters of a mile on the further side of the valley. Both dismounted, for the rest of the way she was to finish alone.
“Good-bye now, my own love, my sweet,” he murmured as they stood, locked together in a last long embrace. “I shall see you to-morrow, but it will not be as it has been to-day.”
“Not quite. But we will have other days like this. And—keep up heart—remember, for my sake. When you are disposed to lose it, think of me and feel sure that nothing can part us—as sure as that moon is shining. Good-bye, my love. It is only ‘good-night,’ though.”
No more was said, as he swung her into the saddle. He himself stood there watching her fast receding form, nor did he leave the spot until the sudden subsidence of the canine clamour, told that she had reached her home.