; 'I won't niggle about it. The
people of this place--idiots!--are unable to believe that a man and a
woman can be to each other what we are.'

'Yes?' said Madeline. She paused beside the parapet and looked down at
the indistinct little fields below, and the blurred masses of white wild
roses waving midway against the precipice.

'They can not understand that there can be any higher plane of
intercourse between us than the one they know. They won't see--they
can't see--that the satisfaction we find in being together is of a
different nature.'

'I see,' said Madeline. She had raised her eyes, and they sought
the solemn lines of the horizon. She looked as if she saw something
infinitely lifted above the pettiness he retailed to her.

'So they say--good God, why should I tell you what they say!' It
suddenly flashed upon him that the embodiment of it in words would be at
once, from him, sacrilegious and ludicrous. It flashed upon him that her
natural anger would bring him pain, and that if she laughed--it was so
hard to tell when she would laugh--it would be as if she struck him.
He cast about him dumb and helpless while she kept her invincibly
quiet gaze upon the farther hills. She was thinking that this breath of
gossip, now that it had blown, was a very slight affair compared with
Horace Innes's misery--which he did not seem to understand. Then her
soul rose up in her, brushing everything aside, and forgetting, alas!
the vow it had once made to her.

'I think I know,' she said. 'They are indeed foolish. They say that
we--love each other. Is not that what they say?'

He looked in amazement into her tender eyes and caught at the little
mocking smile about her lips. Suddenly the world grew light about him,
the shadows fled away. Somewhere down in the valley, he remembered
afterward, a hill-flute made music. When he spoke it was almost in a
whisper, lest he should disturb some newly perceived lovely thing that
had wings, and might leave him. 'Oh, Madeline,' he said, 'is it true?'
She only smiled on in gladness that took no heed of any apprehension,
any fear or scruple, and he himself keeping his eyes upon her face,
said, 'It is true.'

So they stood for a little time in silence while she resisted her great
opportunity. She resisted it to the end, and presently beckoned to the
syce, who came up leading the pony. Innes mounted her mechanically and
said, 'Is that all right?' as she put her foot in the stirrup, without