Since her return to Heath Hover Melian had experienced none of the fears and misgivings which had hung over her before. The “influence” what ever it was, seemed to have ceased, or was it in abeyance? Anyway, with Helston Varne under the same roof nothing mattered. It seemed as if nothing could matter.
For here he was, installed at Heath Hover as a guest, he who had first come there as a spy, and that in a hostile interest to his now host. He had not returned from the East in their company. With marvellous self denial—or self control—or both, he had waited a week later, and then returned alone. Characteristically he had reckoned that just that period of time without him would deepen Melian’s interest in him, would cause her to miss him, in short—or not. If so, and he felt justified in feeling sanguine—why there were all their lives before them to make up for it in. If not—well, he refused to contemplate such a contingency.
They had stayed at Mazaran just long enough for a rest after their hard, perilous experiences, but Mervyn had seemed as eager to get away from the country as before he had been to return to it. Helston had seen them off at Karachi, himself taking a passage which brought him home nearly as soon as themselves. And now he had arrived at Heath Hover the evening before, and certainly had found no cause to complain of the nature of his welcome.
The clear, brisk, bracing air lay upon Plane Pond, and upon the reddening woods which flowed down to it, in the early morning, and the voices of birds lifted in their late autumn song, ere silencing for drear winter, made music in “Broceliande.” The girl, tripping lightly up the sluice path, felt all the invigorating influence of it go through her system like a stimulant.
“Good morning, Sirdar.”
Helston Varne turned. He had been leaning on the rail gazing out over the expanse of water, thinking; and what he was thinking about was embodied in this vision of youth and bright sweetness which now stood before him in the early freshness of morning. Melian had taken to calling him “Sirdar” since she had seen him in his wonderful Eastern make-up. But neither of the two men had ever told her the extent of the ghastly peril which the wonderful success of that make-up had been instrumental in delivering them from.
She put out both hands and he took them—both. He held them for quite a moment, gazing into the sweet blue eyes.
“Come,” he said, still holding them. “We’ll stroll a little through ‘Broceliande,’ the enchanted forest.”
She looked at him, and said nothing; and they went, and as they went he drew one of the long white hands over his arm and covered it with one of his brown ones. And what they said in “Broceliande,” the enchanted forest, under the old gnarled oaks—why, reader, that is no earthly concern of yours or mine. What may be, however, is that they emerged eventually therefrom perfectly happy, and at peace with all the world.