"We're done! The bridge is gone!"
Nan's eyes followed the direction of his hand. Here the river ran more swiftly, and swollen by last nights storm of wind and rain, it had swept away the frail old footbridge which spanned it. Only a few decayed sticks and rotten wooden stumps remained of what had once been known as the Lovers' Bridge—the trysting place of who shall say how many lovers in the days of its wooden prime?
Somehow a tinge of melancholy seemed to hang about the few scraps of wreckage. How many times the little bridge must have tempted men and maidens to linger of a summer evening, dreaming the big dreams of youth—visions which the spreading wings of Time bear away into the Land of Lost Desires. Perhaps some kind hand garners them—those tender, wonderful, courageous dreams of our wise youth and keeps them safely for us against the Day of Reckoning, so that they may weight the scales a little in our favour.
Peter stood looking down at the scattered fragments of the bridge with an odd kind of gravity in his eyes. It seemed a piece of trenchant symbolism that the Lovers' Bridge should break when he and Nan essayed to cross it. There was a slight, whimsical smile, which held something of pain, on his lips when he turned to her again.
"I shall have to carry you across," he said.
She shook her head.
"No, thanks. You might drop me. I can wade over."
"It's too deep for you to do that. I won't let you drop."
But Nan still hesitated. She was caught by sudden panic. She felt that she couldn't let Peter—Peter, of all men in the world—carry her in his arms!
"It isn't so deep higher up, is it?" she suggested. "I could wade there."