She raised her eyes: the sphinx-like look of her level brows and calm mouth held for an instant, then her face quivered, grew tremulous and tender. Her hands made a blind, passionate movement, and as he caught her to him he heard her sobbing that she loved him.
He held her close, covering her face with clumsy eager kisses, the first he had ever given a woman, and he gave himself up to worshipping her as she sat on the throne he had made for her.
"Let us go to the boulders above the wood," whispered Blanche, who even in the grip of one of the deepest feelings of her life kept her unfailing flair for the right background; "we can see the sun rise there, over the trees…."
He helped her to her feet and they walked together, hand in hand, like children. The keen personal emotion had passed, leaving them almost timid; now certainty had settled on them passionate inquiry gave place to peace. So they went, and he felt as though he walked in Eden, with the one mate in all the world. Across the moors they went; then—for they were going inland—they came to fields again, and the path ran through acres of cabbages. The curves of the grey-green leaves held the light in wide shimmers of silver, the dew vibrating with diamond colours; edging their two shadows the refraction of the beams brought a halo of brightest white. Another stretch of furze brought them to the boulders above the wood on a level with the massed tree-tops. Ishmael made Blanche put on his coat; then he sat beside her, his hand holding the coat together under her chin.
Nestling her head against him, she closed her eyes, and with soft, regular breathings feigned a sleep that presently became reality. Through the starlit hour between moon-setting and sun-rising Ishmael held her; every now and then she stirred, half woke, and, moving a little to ease his arm, lifted the pallor of her face to his. Before the dawn she awoke completely and began to reproach herself and him.
The time of un-self-consciousness was already over for her, and she was once more the woman who knew how to make men love.
"Oh, how could you let me waste time sleeping? I've not been really asleep—only drowsing. I knew I was sitting beside you all the while."
"Then it wasn't waste for you either." His lips trembled a little, and he said nothing about his own emotions; it had been so unutterably sweet to him to hold her, trusting, quiescent, in his arms and feel the night-wind ruffling her hair against his cheek.
It was still dusk, though the misty blue-grey of the tree-tops was imperceptibly changing to a more living hue, and the sky, stained a deep rust colour, showed a molten whiteness where it touched the world's rim. He unknowingly gripped Blanche's hand till she nearly cried out; except as something that made beauty more beautiful he hardly knew she was there. Slowly the miracle of dawn unfolded; down in the woods birds lifted glad heads, the lids were raised from round, bright eyes, and there came up to the watchers on the rocks the first faint notes that pierced the air of the new day.
Nothing was very wide-awake as yet; all life stirred as though beneath a film; a dim blue coverlet still lay lightly over the wood; the earth held her breath for the moment of birth. What a waiting, what a wide clear sense of certain expectation! The sky, naked of clouds, had become a brightening sphere of pearliness; a deep rose gathered over the hills and spread fanlike, licking up the ashen pallor with stabs of flame. A livid red-gold rim sprang into being behind the hill crests, and slowly and in state the sun swam up the molten sky. He turned to Blanche with the tears in his eyes.