Soon they set off through the new-born and moon-lit green, under shadows that lacked that opacity proper to high summer, under trees which still showed their frameworks through the foliage. Inflorescence of great oaks hung in tassels of chastened gold, and a million translucent leaves diffused rather than shut off the ambient light. Unutterable peace marked their progress; no shard-borne things made organ music; no night-bird cried; only the rivers called under the moon, the mist wound upon the water-meadows, and the silver of remote streamlets twinkled here and there from the hazes of the low-lying grass land or the shadows of the woods—twinkled and vanished, twinkled and vanished again beyond the confines of the night-hidden valley.
"A fairy hour," said Honor; "and all things awake and alive with a strange, strange moon-life that they hide by day."
"The rabbits are awake at any rate. Too many for my peace of mind if this was my land."
"Don't call them rabbits. I'm pretending that their little white scuts are the pixy people. And there's Godleigh under the fir trees—peeping out with huge yellow eyes—like the dragon of an old legend."
"Yes, that's Godleigh."
"Drive me now to Lee Bridge. It was very good of you to come. I appreciate your love and self-denial so much—so much more than I can find words to tell you, Myles."
"God be good to you, my heart! I wish I deserved half your love. You make me young again to hear you speak so kindly—young and happy too—happy as I can be until afterwards."
"It won't be many more weeks. The days that seemed so long in winter time are quite short now, though it is May. That is how a woman's heart defies the seasons and reverses the order of Nature on no greater pretext than a paltry personal one."
"Not paltry!"
"Why, everything that's personal is paltry, I suppose, even to the bearing of your first baby."