He could not reply; the third voice was too loud.
‘Let us go on a little way,’ said Cecilia.
Her lips would scarcely move, and the voice and the beating of her heart was stopping her breath.
Gilbert turned, and they went through the alders, he holding back the twigs for her to pass.
(‘He loves you! he loves you! he loves you!’ cried the voice.)
As she brushed past him through the narrow way her nearness seemed to make the scar on his face throb, and bring again to him the thrill of her fingers upon his cheek. He could bear it no more. They were at the end of the thicket, and, as she stepped out of it in front of him, he sprang after her, catching her in his arms.
‘Cecilia!’ he said, almost in a whisper.
He had grown white.
She drew herself away with an impulse which her womanhood made natural. He followed her fiercely, on his face the set look of a man in a trance.
There are some things in a woman stronger than training, stronger than anything that may have hedged her in from her birth, and they await but the striking of an hour and the touch of one man. As he stretched out his arms anew she turned towards him and threw herself into them. Their lips met, again—again. He held her close in silence.