And they walked through the east gate, and down the wooded hill to the water side.
From an instinct of delicacy, Le turned to the south, which led in an opposite direction from his own home; but Odalite stopped him.
“Let us walk north, toward Greenbushes. We cannot go so far, because it is too late, but it will be pleasant to walk in that direction, Le,” she said.
“Will it, now? To you, Odalite?” he asked, surprised and pleased, yet anxious.
“Very, very pleasant,” she answered, brightly.
He turned with her at once, and had courage to ask:
“Will you take my arm, Odalite?”
She took it at once, and, when he held her hand close to his throbbing heart, she did not draw it away. What should he say to her? How should he understand her? She seemed content, and even happy, to be alone with him. She seemed exactly as she had been before the tempter came between them—content and happy—though it had only been four days since she had been suddenly and effectually separated from the man whom she had declared that she wished to marry. She had said that no one forced her to marry him. But—did any one force her to wish to marry him? That was the question. Was his dream or vision at sea a prophetic one? Was Wynnette’s and Elva’s belief a true inspiration? And had Odalite, in her consent to marry Anglesea, thrown herself into the waves to escape the flames? And now that she was happily rescued from the waves, was she glad?
He looked at her again. Her face was calm and bright. And it was a true index to her mind, which was also calm and bright.
Why should it not be? She had been saved from a fate worse than death—saved from the slavery of an abhorrent marriage, she was free—with a sense of freedom that she had never fully enjoyed until she had lost her liberty and regained it. Her own and her dear mother’s mortal enemy, whose presence, even on the continent, crowded her as it did Wynnette, was gone across the sea! And she knew nothing—poor child!—of the chain the man had thrown around her mother’s, his victim’s, neck before he went away! Mrs. Force had never told that dread secret to her daughter. It was not necessary to do so, at least not yet, so she let Odalite recover her cheerfulness and enjoy her life, if it were only in a fool’s paradise.