So our strife shall end.
Gabriel swung himself down by the filbert tree, brushed the dust from his dark green doublet, set his broad-brimmed hat at the correct angle with unusual care, and made his way through the gate as though he had never climbed a tree or lounged upon a wall in his life.
Who would have dreamed that to walk down that familiar glade to greet Hilary, would ever have caused his throat to grow dry and his breath to come in so strange a fashion, for all the world as though he were running a race! At last she looked up, and with a glad cry rose to welcome him; the guitar slipped unheeded on to the grass, and both her hands caught his, while her dark grey eyes smiled in a way that fairly dazzled the youth, who had but just realised that he was her lover.
“So you have come from Oxford at last,” she cried. “How long it is since we met!” He stooped to kiss her hand.
“Surely it was in some other life!” he said, with a strange feeling that suddenly all things had become new.
She laughed gaily as they sat down side by side. “Here, at any rate, is the same old stone bench where you and I used to learn our lessons,” she said. “And yonder is the stump to which you tied my puppet the day you played at Smithfield martyrs.”
“What a little brute I was.”
“You were a rare hand at teasing; but I’ll never forget it to you that you rescued my Bartholomew babe from the power of the dog. How the wretch bit your arm!”
“I am much indebted to him,” said Gabriel, smiling, “and would not for the world lose that honourable scar. Nothing would please me more than to suffer again in your service.”
His face was aglow, and Hilary, with a little stirring of the heart, turned from him and plucked a rose from the great hush of sweet-briar growing near the bench.