Yet as they paused at the first turn he looked back towards the two figures cresting the rise, and remarked easily to his companion that Miss Carmichael was quite a picture on the hillside, and walked like a shepherd. And then, as easily, he proposed taking a détour through a nut wood, and so by a path he knew back to the beach.
"Alice would like a cup of tea, please; she is rather tired," he said to his sister, when they arrived there, and Lady George gave a little gasp of relief. "Oh, Paul! I'm so glad! What a dear boy you are!"
And about the same time Tom Kennedy and Marjory Carmichael stood side by side on a neck of land connecting one range of hills with another. The bog myrtle, crushed under their feet, sent an aromatic, invigorating scent into the air. The fresh cool sea breeze, which had gathered a heather perfume in its passage over the windswept moor, blew in their faces, and a golden mist cloud, growing above the rising shadow of the little valley on either side of them, shut out the world below. The only sign of life, save those two standing hand in hand, being a stone-chat twittering on a boulder, and a group of scared sheep, waiting with backward turned heads for the next movement to send them with a headlong rush and a clatter of stones into the mists below.
But none came. For those two stood silent for a time.
"Oh, Tom!" she said at last; "was there ever anyone so good, so kind as you are?"
He paused a moment, looking into her tearful eyes, and something of the earth earthy, seemed to slip from him, leaving him a clearer vision.
"You shall answer that question for yourself, some day, my friend," he said. "A year hence--two years--three years. What does it matter? Auf-wieder-sehn!"
"Auf-wieder-sehn!"
The echo of her own reply came back to her from the mist as she stood, after he had gone, looking into the valley.
Auf-wieder-sehn! Yes!--to such a tie as that there could be no other parting.