"He is so happy, so gay," urged the voice, "so full of his plans! And you have left it so late. How painful now, just as he is going, to bid him think: 'I will never see her face again!'"
(How close he sat beside her! How close her secret sat within her!)
"Think how it is with you," pursued the tempting voice. "It is hard to part from a face, but not so hard to part from the writer of a letter."
Over the next crest the Belgian Ardennes showed blue and dim in the distance.
"Stop!" he said, holding up his hand again.
They were on the top of a high plateau; she drew up. A large bird with red under its wings flapped out and hung in the air over the precipice.
"See—the Meuse!" he said. "See, on its banks, do you see down there?
Come to the edge."
Hundreds of feet below lay a ribbon-loop of dark, unstirring water. They stood at the edge of the rock looking down together. She saw he was excited. His usually pale face was flushed.
"Do you see down there, do you see in this light—a village?"
She could see well enough a village.