She was a little bit of a woman, frail and fair, who looked over-weighted by her dark riding habit, but both seemed lost in the man's hold, as vibrating with tense emotion, he stood silent, their mingled figures forming a swaying shadow against that further light.
"At last," he said, in tender exultation, "at long last!"
She threw back her head then, and looked him in the eyes, hope and fear, and joy and sorrow showing in her face.
"I couldn't stand it--at the last," she almost sobbed, "when it came to going away, and leaving you here--alone--with that awful risk--for no one can say what mayn't come--with cholera---- He"--her voice trembled over the small syllable--"started earlier--I am to meet him by-and-by--so I came round--just to see you--and now----" She buried her face again, and the sobs shook her gently. He tightened his hold.
"I'm glad!" he replied, in a hard voice. "It was bound to come sooner or later--you couldn't go on for ever--an angel from heaven couldn't go on standing--it all. But now----" his voice changed--"now you and I----" he broke off and raised his head to listen.
It was a wild weird cry, that echoed and re-echoed over the wide stretches of water, that rose in one long continuous melodious wail from every reed bed, every thicket of sedge, every tuft of low lamarisk and bent-rush; for it was the dawn-cry of the myriad wild fowl which haunted this low-lying jheel of Northern India, and swift as thought, with a thunderous whirr of wide wings, the birds, teal and mallard and widgeon, white eye, pochard, and green shank, purple heron and white, rose in ones, in twos, in threes, in flocks, in companies, in serried battalions.
The primrose dawn was half effaced, the coming day was darkened by wheeling, veering, eddying flight, and the peace vanished in the strife of wings.
"By George! what a shot," cried the man excitedly, even passion forgotten as a trail of whistling teal swooped past, unconscious of them, to settle on the still water, then, recognising unlooked for humanity, veered at sharp angle to rise again into the troubled air.
But the woman clung closer. To her the interruption was terrible. The soaring birds brought home to her what she had done, and before that knowledge compelling emotion stopped abruptly.
"It is very foolish of me," she murmured brokenly, "and very wrong--though I don't know!--I don't know! It was your danger--and I was so tired--besides it--it need make no difference."