"I have been on the prowl for you," she whispered. "Are you angry with me for doing it?"
"Why should I be angry?" he answered. "I have just been to see you."
"At last!" she sighed, and leaned closely against him. "My whole life is nothing but one long waiting for you, Leo. I am sick with longing for you."
"And I for you," he muttered.
Her arm trembled violently in his. They were both silent for a moment, for they now knew what they had wanted to know.
Bars of rosy twilight from the west fell on the snowy plain. The hazel-wood, as they walked towards it, deepened in colour from brown to violet, and the crows were on the ground again, sitting in black clumps amidst the scanty undergrowth, their beaks uplifted to the sky. Now and then there sounded from the road the sharp, sudden jingle of a bell, when the waiting horses stamped a hoof or moved a head.
Leo's heart beat. He felt that in the next few minutes their fate must be decided.
"Listen, Felicitas," he began; "things are in a bad way with us."
"What has happened?" she stammered, standing still, full of dismay, in the sleigh ruts.
"Nothing has happened yet. But we must part before something does."