"Let us respect this room," she breathed. Then she was ashamed at having refused, and immediately stammered, "Excuse me."
The man also looked around the room. His forehead darkened with a savage frown of suspicion, and the superstition of his race shone in his eyes.
"It was here—that he died?"
"No," she said.
* * * * * * * * *
Afterwards they did as the others had done, as human beings always do, as they themselves would do many times again in the strange future—they sat with their eyes half-closed and the same uneasy look of shame and terror in them as Amy and her lover.
But these two required no artificial stimulus for their love. They had no need of the night. And they felt no culpability. They were two grand young creatures, driven together naturally by the very force of their love, and their ardour cleansed everything, like fire. They were innocent. They had no regrets and felt no remorse. They thought they were united.
He took her soft hand in his dark hand, and said: "Now you are mine for always. You have made me know divine ecstasy. You have my heart and I have yours. You are my wife forever."
"You are everything to me," she answered.
They went forth into life like a couple in legend, inspired and rosy with anticipation—he, the knight with no shadows falling on him except the dark of his hair, helmeted or plumed, and she, the priestess of the pagan gods, the spirit of nature.