He loosed it from the branch. She lifted the lace, put it over her head, and held it with her slender hand beneath her chin. He looked at her, and his breath came sharply. A shaft of light, deeply gold, struck across the woodland path. He stood within it, on slightly rising ground that lifted him above her. The quality of the light gave him a singular aspect. He looked a visitant from another world, a worn spirit, of fine temper, but somewhat haggard, somewhat stained. Lines came into Judith's brow. She stepped more quickly, and they passed from out the wood to a bare hillside, grass and field flowers to the summit. The little path that zigzagged upward was not wide enough for two. He moved through the grass and flowers beside her, a little higher still, and between her and the sun. His figure was dark; no longer lighted as it was in the wood. Judith sighed inwardly. "I am so tired that I am fanciful. I should not have come." She talked on. "When we were children and read 'Pilgrim's Progress' Unity and I named this the Hill Difficulty. And we named the Blue Ridge the Delectable Mountains—War puts a stop to reading."
"Yes. The Hill Difficulty! On the other side was the Valley of Humiliation, was it not?"
"Yes: where Christian met Apollyon. We are nearly up, and the sunset will be beautiful."
At the top, around a solitary tree, had been built a bench. The two sat down. The sun was sinking behind the Blue Ridge. Above the mountains sailed a fleet of little clouds, in a sea of pale gold shut in by purple headlands. Here and there on the earth the yellow light lingered. Judith sat with her head thrown back against the bark of the tree, her eyes upon the long purple coast and the golden sea. Stafford, his sword drawn forward, rested his clasped hands upon the hilt and his cheek on his hands. "Are they not like the Delectable Mountains?" she said. "Almost you can see the shepherds and the flocks—hear the pilgrims singing. Look where that shaft of light is striking!"
"There is heliotrope all around me," he answered. "I see nothing, know nothing but that!"
"You do very wrongly," she said. "You pain me and you anger me!"
"Judith! Judith! I cannot help it. If the wildest tempest were blowing about this hilltop, a leaf upon this tree might strive and strive to cling to the bough, to remain with its larger self—yet would it be twisted off and carried whither the wind willed! My passion is that tempest and my soul is that leaf."
"It is more than a year since first I told you that I could not return your feeling. Last October—that day we rode to the old mill—I told you so again, and told you that if we were to remain friends it could only be on condition that you accepted the truth as truth and let the storm you speak of die! You promised—"
"Even pale friendship, Judith—I wanted that!"
"If you wish it still, all talk like this must cease. After October I thought it was quite over. All through the winter those gay, wonderful letters that you wrote kept us up at Greenwood—"