“It was your face in the churchyard,” he told her. “How pale and worn you looked! It came to me then for the first time how horribly selfish it would be to stay—how much easier going would make it for you.”
“... And to think that it was Mad Anthony—Did the clock really strike thirteen, do you think? Or did I fancy it?”
“Why question it?” he said. “I believe in mysteries. The greatest mystery of all is that you should love me. I doubt no miracle hereafter. Dearest, dearest!”
At the entrance of the cherry lane, he fastened his horse to the hedge, and noiselessly let down the pasture-bars for her golden chestnut. When he came back to where she stood waiting on the edge of the lawn, the late moon, golden-vestured, was just showing above the rim of the hills, painting the deep soft blueness of the Virginian night with a translucence as pure as prayer. Above the fallen hood of her cloak her hair shone like a nimbus, and the loveliness of her face made him catch his breath for the wonderfulness of it.
As they stood heavened in each other’s arms, heart beating against heart, and the whole world throbbing to joy, the nightingale beyond the arbors began to bubble and thrill its unimaginable melody. It came to them like the voice of the magical rose-scented night itself, set to the wordless music of the silver leaves. It rose and swelled exultant to break and die in a cascade of golden notes.
But in their hearts was the song that is fadeless, immortal.