'May the Goddess of the silver bow and crescent protect her! To me the
name is ominous of mischance.'

'I would commit my fortunes and life . . . !' He checked his tongue,
ejaculating: 'Omens!'

She had veered straight away from her romantic aspirations to the blunt
extreme of thinking that a widow should be wooed in unornamented
matter-of-fact, as she is wedded, with a 'wilt thou,' and 'I will,' and
no decorative illusions. Downright, for the unpoetic creature, if you
please! So she rejected the accompaniment of the silver Goddess and high
seas for an introduction of the crisis.

'This would be a thunderer on our coasts. I had a trial of my sailing
powers in the Mediterranean.'

As she said it, her musings on him then, with the contract of her
position toward him now, fierily brushed her cheeks; and she wished him
the man to make one snatch at her poor lost small butterfly bit of
freedom, so that she might suddenly feel in haven, at peace with her
expectant Emma. He could have seen the inviting consciousness, but he was
absurdly watchful lest the flying sprays of border trees should strike
her. He mentioned his fear, and it became an excuse for her seeking
protection of her veil. 'It is our natural guardian,' she said.

'Not much against timber,' said he.

The worthy creature's anxiety was of the pattern of cavaliers escorting
dames--an exaggeration of honest zeal; a present example of clownish
goodness, it might seem; until entering the larch and firwood along the
beaten heights, there was a rocking and straining of the shallow-rooted
trees in a tremendous gust that quite pardoned him for curving his arm in
a hoop about her and holding a shoulder in front. The veil did her
positive service.

He was honourably scrupulous not to presume. A right good unimpulsive
gentleman: the same that she had always taken him for and liked.

'These firs are not taproots,' he observed, by way of apology.

Her dress volumed and her ribands rattled and chirruped on the verge of
the slope. 'I will take your arm here,' she said.

Redworth received the little hand, saying: 'Lean to me.'

They descended upon great surges of wind piping and driving every light
surface-atom as foam; and they blinked and shook; even the man was
shaken. But their arms were interlinked and they grappled; the battering
enemy made them one. It might mean nothing, or everything: to him it
meant the sheer blissful instant.

At the foot of the hill, he