“It was a kind of accident,” he admitted; “I never thought about it the way you did. It seemed young to me.”
“I don't believe it was an accident in the least,” she insisted. A mist rose greyly from the darker surface of the stream, and settled cold and clammy about Anthony's face. It drew about them in wavering garlands, growing steadily denser. Eliza was sitting now pressed against him, and he felt a shiver run through her. “You are cold!” he cried instantly, and rose, lifting her to her feet. She smiled, in his arms, and he bent down and kissed her. She clung to him with a deep sigh, and met his lips steadily with her own. The mist slipped like a veil over Eliza's head and drops of moisture shone in her hair. Anthony turned and unfastened the canoe; and, suddenly conscious of the length of their delay, he urged it with long sweeps over the stream. Beyond the lilacs, distilling their potent sweetness in the dark, Eliza was motionless, silent, a flicker of white in the gloom.
They swept almost immediately into the broad reach where they had started. The lights from the windows of a boat house, the voices of the others, streamed gaily over the water. He felt Eliza tremble as he lifted her ashore.
“It's happiness,” she told him; “I am ever so warm inside.”
XVII
BY his plate at the lunch table he discovered, the following day, a small, lavender envelope stamped and addressed to Anthony Ball, Esq. He slipped it hastily into his pocket, and managed but a short-lived pretext of eating. Then, with the letter yet unopened, he left Ellerton, and penetrated into the heart of the countryside.
He stopped, finally, under a fence that crossed a hill, on a slope of wild strawberries. The hill fell away in an unbroken sweep of undulating, blue-green wheat; trees filled the hollow, with a roof and thread of silver water drawn through the lush leaves; on either hand chocolate loam bore the tender ripple of young com; and beyond, crossed by the shifting shadows of slow-drifting clouds, hill and wood and pasture spread a mellow mosaic of summer.
He tore open the envelope with a reluctant delight. At the top of the sheet E D was stamped severely in mauve. “My very dear,” he read. He stopped, suddenly unable to proceed; the countryside swam in his vision; he gulped an ecstatic, convulsive breath, and proceeded: