She seemed to know where
he was taking her, and neither of them spoke a single word, while he
pulled out into the open, and over to the far bank.

There was but one field between them and the wood--a field of young
wheat, with a hedge of thorn and alder. And close to that hedge they set
out, their hands clasped. They had nothing to say yet--like children
saving up. She had put on her cloak to hide her dress, and its silk
swished against the silvery blades of the wheat. What had moved her to
put on this blue cloak? Blue of the sky, and flowers, of birds' wings,
and the black-burning blue of the night! The hue of all holy things!
And how still it was in the late gleam of the sun! Not one little sound
of beast or bird or tree; not one bee humming! And not much colour--only
the starry white hemlocks and globe-campion flowers, and the low-flying
glamour of the last warm light on the wheat.

XX

. . . Now over wood and river the evening drew in fast. And first the
swallows, that had looked as if they would never stay their hunting,
ceased; and the light, that had seemed fastened above the world, for all
its last brightenings, slowly fell wingless and dusky.

The moon would not rise till ten! And all things waited. The creatures
of night were slow to come forth after that long bright summer's day,
watching for the shades of the trees to sink deeper and deeper into the
now chalk-white water; watching for the chalk-white face of the sky to be
masked with velvet. The very black-plumed trees themselves seemed to
wait in suspense for the grape-bloom of night. All things stared, wan in
that hour of pass ing day--all things had eyes wistful and unblessed.
In those moments glamour was so dead that it was as if meaning had
abandoned the earth. But not for long. Winged with darkness, it stole
back; not the soul of meaning that had gone, but a witch-like and
brooding spirit harbouring in the black trees, in the high dark spears of
the rushes, and on the grim-snouted snags that lurked along the river
bank. Then the owls came out, and night-flying things. And in the wood
there began a cruel bird-tragedy--some dark pursuit in the twilight above
the bracken; the piercing shrieks of a creature into whom talons have
again and again gone home; and mingled with them, hoarse raging cries of
triumph. Many minutes they lasted, those noises of the night,
sound-emblems of all the cruelty in the heart of Nature; till at las