They stood together under the yews, full of youth and innocent joy of soul, timid, happily sad, content to be mere children. Flavian touched her hands as he would have touched a lily. She seemed too wonderful, too pure, too transcendent to be fingered. A supreme, a godly timidity possessed him; he had such love in his heart as only the strong and the pure can know, such love as makes a man a saint unto himself, a being wrapped round with the rarest chivalry of heaven.
Their words were very simple and infrequent.
"I have been thinking," said the girl.
"Yes?"
"How war seems ever in the world."
"How else should I have won you?"
She sighed and looked up over his shoulder at the sunlight glimmering gold through the yews.
"I have been thinking how I bring you infinite peril. They will not lose me easily. What if I bring you to ruin?"
"I take everything to myself."
"They believe me a saint."