“You have no sense!” said Richard shortly.
“Sense—?... Oh!”
“To hurry like that!—We have the day before us!”
“Have we?” She looked about with a little puzzled vagueness. “I think I must have been hurrying—to get back to set the table for dinner!” She was laughing at him. “It felt like being a girl!” she said.
“I shall go ahead after this,” responded Richard. “I’m not going to have you fainting away or twisting an ankle, or any other silly thing!”
“Nonsense!”
But when they started again he led the way; and they stopped at judicious intervals—to look at the view and talk of scenery—and Richard kept a careful eye on the face with its flitting color, and on her quickened breath. She leaned a little against him the last part of the way. Then they came out on the open bluff, with the country lying before them.
She stood gazing down at it with shining eyes. “Nothing has changed!” she cried after a minute.
“Not from up here,” said Richard. “Sit down.”
He made a place for her by a birch-tree and she leaned back against it and they looked out in silence over the wide country.