For a moment he made no answer. Then:
“I should simply wipe you out of my life. That’s all.”
He spoke very evenly, but with such a note of absolute finality in his quiet voice that Ann quivered a little as she lay in his arms—as one might wince if any one laid the keen edge of a naked blade against one’s throat, no matter how lightly.
“Ah! Don’t let’s talk of such things!” she cried hastily. “Don’t let’s spoil our first day, Eliot. Do you realise”—with a radiant smile—“that this is the first—the very first—day we have really belonged to each other?”
So they talked of other things—the foolish, sweet, and tender things which lovers have always talked and probably always will—things which are of no moment to the busy material-minded world as it bustles on its way, but which are the frail filaments out of which men and women fashion for themselves dear memories that shall sweeten all their lives.
But time will not wait, even for lovers, and Eliot had been gone over an hour when at last Robin returned from Ferribridge.
“Cast a shoe and had to wait an unconscionable time to get my horse shod,” he explained briefly.
“You must be starving,” commiserated Ann, “I’ll tell Maria to bring you in some supper at once. I’ve had mine.” But she omitted to add she had hardly eaten anything at the little solitary meal which succeeded Eliot’s departure.
Maria’s indignation as she carried out the half-touched dishes had been tinctured with a certain philosophic indulgence. “Ah, well!” she commented. “They do say folks that be mazed wi’ love can’t never fancy their victuals. Seems like tez true.” In response to which Ann had merely laughed and kissed her weather-beaten old cheek.
In true masculine fashion, it was not until the cravings of his inner man were satisfied that Robin began to observe anything unusual in the atmosphere. But when at last he had finished supper, and was filling his beloved pipe preparatory to enjoying that best of all smokes which follows a long day’s riding and a cosy meal, it dawned upon him that there was something unaccustomed in Ann’s air of suppressed radiance. She was hovering about him, waiting to strike a match for him to light up by, when the idea struck him. He regarded her attentively for a minute or two with his nice grey-green eyes and finally inquired in a tone of mild amusement: