"No!" she said quickly. "On a long sea-trip someone would surely know us--isn't there some way we can get away, disappear as if we had never been?"
"Cherry!" he said, kneeling before her in the wet grass. "You know what it means!"
"It means you!" she answered, after a silence. She had laid her hands softly about his neck, and her shining eyes were close to his.
"And you trust me?" he whispered. "You know that when I am free and you are free--"
She put her fingers over his mouth.
"Peter! Haven't I known you ever since I was little enough to sit in your lap and have you read 'Lady Jane' to me? It's so beautiful--it's so wonderful--to love this way," she said, in her innocent, little-girl voice, "that it seems to me the only thing in the world! I'd come to you, Peter, if it meant shame and death and horror. It doesn't mean that, it only means a man and a woman settling down somewhere in the south of France, a big quiet man who limps a little, and a little yellow-headed woman in blue smocks and silly-looking hats--"
"It means life, of course!" he interrupted her. "The hour that makes you mine, Cherry, will be the exquisite hour of my whole life!"
They were silent for a while, and below them the white moonlight deepened and brightened and swam like an enchantment.
"If you will face it," Peter said, presently, "I will give every instant of my life to you!"
"I know you will," she said, dreamily.