He urged that she was unconscious of herself, that she did not know her own heart, nor what it wanted; that he had approached her inner life more nearly than another might ever do; that, give him time and chance, he could not fail to win her.
She only answered that she was not won.
Before, in their windings and wanderings, they had reached the foot of the mountain that day, they met their recusant and repentant guide coming up with others in search of them, and all their toil and trouble were over.
Reymund’s holiday was over too. He was to return next day to his home, to engagements previously formed and not to be disregarded.
“At least,” he said to Orient, not sadly, but with a certain vigor of intention in his tone, “you will allow me to visit you at your mother’s house?”
“You could not do a kinder thing,” answered Orient, feeling now the gap that he would leave, and which nothing could quite fill, and willing to grant him anything but what he most desired.
“Then you will see me on Saturdays.”
“Every Saturday!” she exclaimed, with a bright face that made his heart bound. “That is too much to ask.”
“Of you, perhaps; not of me. Sunday is a spare day; if I use it for God’s worship, it shall be at what shrine I please,—St. Orient’s or another’s.”
“And it is such a long ride,” demurred she, remembering the miles on miles of low sea-coast country threaded with rivers and inlaid with marshes, that he must cross, all day flying along through their damp breath and salt winds. “Nine hours; I am afraid I ought not to allow it. And yet,—and yet, nine or nineteen, it shall make no difference.”