She turned round her head to look at him for a moment: there were tears still in her eyes, but very soft ones, a kind of honey-dew. “Did you, Val?” she said, half under her breath.
“Always,” said the lad. “I wanted you to see everything I saw. I thought how sweet it would be if we could go everywhere together, as we did when we were children—but not just like that either. You know, don’t you, how fond I am of you, Vi?”
“Oh Val!” She was almost as near him as when she fell asleep on his shoulder. “But you must not speak to me so now,” she cried suddenly, making an effort to break the innocent spell which seemed to draw them closer and closer; “it makes me wretched. Oh Val, it is not only that we were on the other side this morning. My heart is breaking. I am sure papa means to do something against you, and I cannot stop him. I think my heart will break.”
“What can he do against me?” said Val, in his light-hearted confidence; “and he would not if he could. Don’t think of such nonsense, Vi, but listen to me. We are not children now, but I am fonder of you than of anybody in the world. Why shouldn’t we go everywhere together, be always together. If I might go to your father now and say you belonged to me, he could not carry you off to the other side—could he? Vi,” said the lad, a little chilled and anxious, “don’t turn your head away, dear. Won’t you have me, Vi?”
“Oh Val, wait a little—I daren’t listen to you now. I should be afraid to say a word.”
“Afraid, Vi, to say anything to me—except that you don’t care for me!” said Valentine, holding her fast. “Look me in the face, and you could never have the heart to say that.”
Violet did not say anything good or bad, but she turned softly to him: her face met his eyes as a child turns to a mother or a flower to the sun, and they kissed each other tenderly under the great beech boughs where they had sat leaning against each other, two forlorn babies, ten long years before. The scene now was the completion of the scene then. What explanations were wanted between the children? they had loved each other all along; no one else had so much as come within the threshold of either heart. They clung together, feeling it so natural, murmuring in each other’s ears with their heads so close; the sunset glowing, then fading about them, till the green glade under the beeches was left in a silvery grey calm of evening, instead of that golden glow. The Babes in the Wood had forgotten themselves. Violet at last discovered with a start, how changed the light was and how embrowned the evening. She started from her young lover’s arm.
“Oh, how late it is!” she cried. “Oh, what will they think at home? I must go. I must go at once, or they will think I am lost.”
“We have been lost before now,” said Val, taking it much more easily. “But it is late, and there’s a dinner and fine people at Rosscraig. Oh Vi, what a bore, what a bore! Can’t you come with me?—not this night when so much has happened, not this one night?”