It was probably on the stroke of ten, and Dick had been half asleep for some time against the bank, when Esther came up the road carrying a bundle. Some kind of instinct, or perhaps the distant light footfalls, recalled him, while she was still a good way off, to the possession of his faculties, and he half raised himself and blinked upon the world. It took him some time to recollect his thoughts. He had awakened with a certain blank and childish sense of pleasure, like a man who had received a legacy overnight; but this feeling gradually died away, and was then suddenly and stunningly succeeded by a conviction of the truth. The whole story of the past night sprang into his mind with every detail, as by an exercise of the direct and speedy sense of sight, and he arose from the ditch and, with rueful courage, went to meet his love.
She came up to him walking steady and fast, her face still pale, but to all appearance perfectly composed; and she showed neither surprise, relief, nor pleasure at finding her lover on the spot. Nor did she offer him her hand.
‘Here I am,’ said he.
‘Yes,’ she replied; and then, without a pause or any change of voice, ‘I want you to take me away,’ she added.
‘Away?’ he repeated. ‘How? Where?’
‘To-day,’ she said. ‘I do not care where it is, but I want you to take me away.’
‘For how long? I do not understand,’ gasped Dick.
‘I shall never come back here any more,’ was all she answered.
Wild words uttered, as these were, with perfect quiet of manner and voice, exercise a double influence on the hearer’s mind. Dick was confounded; he recovered from astonishment only to fall into doubt and alarm. He looked upon her frozen attitude, so discouraging for a lover to behold, and recoiled from the thoughts which it suggested.
‘To me?’ he asked. ‘Are you coming to me, Esther?’