“And can you see—really see all that in me, Alaric?”
“All that, and a great deal more,” he answered vehemently, drawing her to him. “So now give me your first kiss.”
“Darling, I will.”
The sun streamed hotter and hotter into the open space, frogs croaked among the reeds surrounding the burnished surface of the pool; a lemur, swinging and bounding on high among the twisted tree-trunks, stared down, blinking his beady eyes and cocking his pointed snout; a large snake lay coiled in the grass hard by, wondering if safety rested in lying still or beating a retreat; half-a-hundred of the eyes and lives of the forest were witness to the beginning of the mating of these two, witnesses, as they may have been to the darker deeds of blood which these grim shades had so lately contained.
Chapter Nineteen.
The Forest.
“And all this time we have been forgetting our picnic,” reminded Verna merrily.
They undid the saddle bags and spread out the contents. Nothing had been forgotten, for had not she herself packed them?