So still was the night! Only that long, curving runnel of the brook again accompanied the silence. Not a leaf moved on the bushes of those far-swelling fields or on the hill that hid their summit; the air was like the moonlight, so fragrantly cool with the odors of the damp fern and birch. The straight, supple figure of Girard still stood in the roadway, bareheaded, with that powerful effect which he had, even here, of absorbing all the life of the scene.
Dosia experienced the inexplicable feeling of the girl alone, for the first time, with the man who loves her and whom she loves. At that moment she loved him so much that she would have fled anywhere in the world from him.
The next moment he said in a matter-of-fact tone:
"Sit down on that stone, and let me shake out your shoes before we go on; they're full of sand."
She obeyed with an open-eyed gaze that dwelt on him, while he knelt down and loosened the bows, and took off the little clumpy low shoes, shaking them out carefully, and then put them on once more, retying the bows neatly with long, slowly accomplishing fingers.
"They'll get full of earth again," she protested, her voice half lost in the silence.
"Then I'll take them off and shake them out over again."
He stood up, brushing the earth from his palms, smiling down at her as she stood up also. "I've always dreamed of doing that," he said simply. "I've dreamed of taking you in my arms and carrying you off through the night—as I couldn't that first time! I've longed so to do it, there have been times when I couldn't stand it to see you, because you weren't mine." Then—her hands were in his, his dear, protecting hands, the hands she loved, with their thrilling, long-familiar touch, claiming as well as giving.
"Oh—Dosia!" he said below his breath.
As their eyes dwelt on each other in that long look, all that had hurt love rose up between them, and passed away, forgiven. She previsioned a time when all her life before he came into it would have dropped out of remembrance as a tale that is told. And now——