"How old are you?" he said, laughing. "Eighteen—or eighty?"
Suddenly he put out his arms, enfolding her. And she, still sobbing, raised her hands, clasped them round his neck, and clung to him like a child.
"Oh! I knew—I knew—when I first saw your face. I had been so miserable all day—and then you looked at me—and I wanted to tell you all. Oh, I adore you—I adore you!" Their faces met. Ashe tasted a moment of rapture; and knew himself free at last of the great company of poets and of lovers.
They slipped back to the house, and Ashe saw her disappear by a door on the farther side of the orangery—noiselessly, without a sound. Except that just at the last she drew him to her and breathed a sacred whisper in his ear.
"Oh! what—what will Lady Tranmore say?"
Then she fled. But she left her question behind her, and when the dawn came Ashe found that he had spent half the night in trying anew to frame some sort of an answer to it.
PART II
THREE YEARS AFTER
"The world an ancient murderer is."