A love tremor possessed her body.
"Say I love you," she said at another of their frequent halts.
"I love you! I love you! I love you!"
"I love music. But there's no music like that."
He placed his arm caressingly about her soft, warm body.
"Don't!" she pleaded.
"Don't!" he queried in surprise.
"It makes me love you so."
She spoke truly: from her lips to her pretty toes her body was burning with love. Her ecstasy was such that one moment she felt as if she could wing a flight into the heavens; at another, she was faint with love-sickness, when she clung tremulously to her lover for support.
Above, the stars shone out with a yet greater brilliance and in immense profusion. Now and again, a shooting star would dart swiftly down to go out suddenly. The multitude of many coloured stars dazzled her brain. It seemed to her love-intoxicated imagination as if night embraced the earth, even as Perigal held her body to his, and that the stars were an illumination and were twinkling so happily in honour of the double union. For all the splendid egotism born of human passion, the immense intercourse of night and earth seemed to reduce her to insignificance. She crept closer to Perigal's side, as if he could give her the protection she needed. He too, perhaps, was touched with the same lowliness, and the same hunger for the support of loving sympathy. His hand sought hers; and with a great wonder, a great love and a great humility in their hearts, they walked home.