“You are not weak at all,” she said, recovering her firm voice.
“I am mad,” he said. “I love you.”
She was dumb. He caught both her hands and his arms thrilled up to the shoulders as with an electric shock.
“What am I doing and saying?” he cried harshly. “I–to you to whom so many men must have said it. What will you say?”
She remained leaning forward and looking steadily into his face.
“I say what I said,” she answered. “You are the only man.”
“Your eyes blind me,” he said.
They spoke no more; but the great land about them and above spoke for them as it rose in the mighty terraces towards the colossal corner-stones of the mountains; and the great wind of West England that rocked the tops of its royal trees; and all that vast valley of Avalon that has seen the muster of heroes and the meeting of immortal lovers, was full of a movement as of the trampling horses and the trumpets, when the kings go forth to battle and queens rule in their stead.
So they stood for a moment on the top of the world and in the highest place of our human fortune, almost at the moment when Olive and John Braintree in the dark and smoky town were taking their sad farewell. And no man could have guessed that the sad farewell was soon to be followed with fuller reconciliation and understanding; but that over the two coloured and shining figures, on the shoulder of the golden down, hung a dark cloud of sundering and division and doom.