The night was very still and quite free from wind but a thin veil of mist concealed the stars.
Adrian, letting the pole sink down on the deck of the barge, moved forward to where she sat holding the rudder, and stretched himself out at her feet.
“Will they follow us?” he whispered in a dreamy indifferent voice.
“No, no!” the girl answered. “They’ll never think of this. They’ll wait for us and when we don’t come back, they’ll search the town and the roads. Let’s go on as we are, dearest. What does it matter? What does anything matter?”
She lay back and ran her fingers gently and dreamily over his forehead.
Swiftly and silently the barge swept on, and willows, poplars, weirs, dam-gates, tall reeds and ruined rush-thatched hovels, passed them by, like figures woven out of unreal shadows.
The water gurgled against the sides of the barge and whispered mournfully against the banks, and, as they advanced, the mystery of the night and the brooding silence of the fens received them in a mystic embrace.
A strange deep happiness gradually surged up in Philippa’s heart. She was with the man she loved; she was with the darkness she loved, and the river she loved. The Loon carried them forward, the pitiful friendly Loon, the Loon which had flowed by the dwelling of her race for so many ages; the Loon which had given Baltazar the peace he craved.
Just the faintest tremor of doubt troubled her, the thought that it was towards Nance—towards her rival—that the tide was bearing them; but let come what might come, that hour at least was hers! Not all the world could take that hour from her—and the future? What did the future matter?
As to the brain-sick man himself, who lay at the girl’s feet, it were long and hard to tell all the strange dim visions that flowed through his head. He took Philippa’s hand in his own and kissed it tenderly but, had the girl known, his thoughts were not of her. They were not even of his son; of the son for whom he had so passionately longed. They were not of any human being. They circled constantly—these thoughts—round a strange vague image, an image moulded of white mists and white vapours and the reflection of white stars in dark waters.