A quickening of her being took place as she came out into the street. After all, she was in the golden possession of life. She picked some heavily fragrant flowers and thrust them in her hair. She was young, and Calmiden was young.
She moved along in the light like the heart of the golden day, her shimmering head lifted to the perfume of the Ylang-Ylang, and a hundred visions stirring in her brain. Behind her unperceived, Delphine and the scarlet splendor of Balthazar desolately trailed.
In the evening she donned the green dress; but as she slipped the green bracelet over her wrist, a sinister shadow swept for a moment upon her mood.
A lithe white figure appeared in the road. She went out to meet it. She had never seen Calmiden when he was so beautifully grave. She walked along beside him. Neither of them spoke.
They went down to the beach, where leaving the village behind they walked silently along the shore. The water washed darkly on clean white sand with the beat and rhythm of a majestic poem of which their emotions supplied the motive. They pressed on through the starlit hush till the causeway lay directly before them.
Wonderful lighted bridge! Water from great distances bore up on either bank, and in mighty rushes took itself off again into space. When the moonlight sprinkled through the darkness, this narrow shining strip stood aloft over the fretted world.
As they started to cross it, Julie said: “I feel as if I were suspended between heaven and earth! I hope I won’t drop.”
“Are you afraid?”
They stopped short. With the turbulence of passion the water was hurling darkly about them. The land appeared to be groups of mystic shadows, and the stars were down almost within reach.
“It’s all said around me,” Calmiden declared in an unsteady voice. “I have loved you from the first, and I shall always love you. Nothing can change that.”