gasped out: "Oh! Noel, what have
I done?" She caught his hand, and gave it a quick squeeze. What a
change! What blissful alteration ever since!

Through the wood young Morland mounted silently, screwing himself up to
put things to the touch. Noel too mounted silently, thinking: 'I will
kiss him if he kisses me!' Eagerness, and a sort of languor, were
running in her veins; she did not look at him from under her shady hat.
Sun light poured down through every chink in the foliage; made the
greenness of the steep wood marvellously vivid and alive; flashed on
beech leaves, ash leaves, birch leaves; fell on the ground in little
runlets; painted bright patches on trunks and grass, the beech mast, the
ferns; butterflies chased each other in that sunlight, and myriads of
ants and gnats and flies seemed possessed by a frenzy of life. The whole
wood seemed possessed, as if the sunshine were a happy Being which had
come to dwell therein. At a half-way spot, where the trees opened and
they could see, far below them, the gleam of the river, she sat down on
the bole of a beech-tree, and young Morland stood looking at her. Why
should one face and not an other, this voice and not that, make a heart
beat; why should a touch from one hand awaken rapture, and a touch from
another awaken nothing? He knelt down and pressed his lips to her foot.
Her eyes grew very bright; but she got up and ran on--she had not
expected him to kiss her foot. She heard him hurrying after her, and
stopped, leaning against a birch trunk. He rushed to her, and, without a
word spoken, his lips were on her lips. The moment in life, which no
words can render, had come for them. They had found their enchanted
spot, and they moved no further, but sat with their arms round each
other, while the happy Being of the wood watched. A marvellous
speeder-up of Love is War. What might have taken six months, was thus
accomplished in three weeks.

A short hour passed, then Noel said:

"I must tell Daddy, Cyril. I meant to tell him something this morning,
only I thought I'd better wait, in case you didn't."

Morland answered: "Oh, Noel!" It was the staple of his conversation
while they sat there.

Again a short hour passed, and Morland said:

"I shall go off my chump if we're not married before I go out."

"How long does it take?"

"No time, if we hurry up. I've got six days before I rejoin, and perhaps
the Chief will give me another week, if I tell hi