The song died out, leaving the night quiet as before, cold, silvery, urgent. She drew nearer to him; he breathed the simple fragrance of her hair, and felt the faint warmth of her body, close to his. Then silence seized upon Thomas Frye; he grew sad without knowing why. The figures at his side, curled in the hay, seemed to him ghostly as a dream. Poor Thomas; he was addled with moonlight; moonlight over Anna, over him, moonlight over the hills, over the road, and voices unseen in the shadows, and shadows unheard all around him.
"I could go on like this till the end of time."
"Could you?"
"I could ride like this forever and ever."
Anna lay quiet, lulled by the cold and the gentle movement of the wagon, now fast, now slow. "Together?" she asked. "Like this?"
"That's what I mean."
His hand touched hers; their fingers twined about each other. "I know," said Anna. She, too, could have gone on forever, dreaming in the moonlight. Noel . . . Thomas . . . what was the difference? "Don't talk. Look at the trees, up against the moon. Look at my breath; there's a regular fog of it."
"Are you cold?" He bent to wrap the heavy blanket more snugly about her. He wanted to say: "You belong to me, and I belong to you." And at that moment, with all her heart, Anna wanted to belong to some one, wanted some one to belong to her . . .
"Thanks, Tom—dear."
The haywagon crossed the first rise, south of the village. Below the road, a rocky field swept downward to the woods, pale green and silver in the moonlight; and beyond, far off and faint, rose Barly Hill, with Barly's lamp burning as bright for all the distance, as if it hung just over those trees, still, and faint with shadows.