"Gorgeous!"
"Wonderful!"
They glided on smoothly, with slacking speed, a part of the stillness that lay like the soft fall of snow over the luminous stretches and the clustered mysterious shadows; without a word exchanged, held by the witchery of the night, and the soft, fairylike crackling voyage. Then gradually, imperceptibly, at last the journey ended. The toboggan came to a stop in a glittering region of white with a river bank and elfish bushes somewhere at their side, and ahead a dark rise against the horizon with lights like pin-pricks far off, and on the air, from nowhere, the tinkle of sleigh-bells, but faint, shaken by some will-o'-the-wisp perhaps.
"Are you glad you came?" she said at last, without moving.
"Very glad."
"Think of sitting around talking society when you can get out here," she said indignantly. "Oh, Bojo, I'm never going to stand it. I think I'll take the veil."
He laughed, but softly, with the feeling of one who understands, as though in that steep plunge the icy air had cleansed his brain of all the hot, fierce worldly desires for money, power, and vanities which had possessed it like a fever.
"I wish we could sit here like this for hours," she said, unconsciously resting against his shoulder.
"I wish we could, too, Drina," he answered, meditating.
She glanced back at him.