They were alone together. Below them the terraces fell to the coloured bogs. A river winding through the bog showed as a darkly blue ribbon, reflecting the cloud of indigo which hung above the bog. Beyond was the Wood of the Echoes, the trees apparently with their feet in the water in which other trees showed inverted. Not a creature to see them, but the robins.
Suddenly he put his head down on her shoulder, with the air of a tired child.
"Your correspondent was not a liar, Mary," he said. "I have visited Mrs. Wade at Waterfall Cottage, at night too, and only not by stealth because I thought that Hercules' ghost—" he shivered a little—"would have kept spies and onlookers from that place."
Lady O'Gara shifted his head slightly with the greatest gentleness, so that she might caress him, stroking his hair with her fingers.
"Well, and why not?" she asked, with her air of gaiety.
"There never was such a wife as you, Mary," he said. "Go on stroking my hair. It draws the pain out."
"You have neuralgia?" she asked with quick alarm.
"No: it is a duller pain than that. It is a sort of congestion caused by keeping secrets from you."
"Secrets!" Her voice was quite unsuspicious. "You could not keep them long."
He sat up and looked at her, and she saw that there was pain in his eyes.