were again alone together, Ellen raised her lips to be kissed, but he
had already turned away. "Let's go home now!" he said urgently. "I want
to know where she's been."

The place seemed far more beautiful to her than it had done before. "Oh!
Now you're sure she's quite safe, mayn't we stay here a little?" she
begged.

"No, no. Some other night. I'll bring you to-morrow night. But not now,
not now."

She followed laggingly, looking about her with infatuation. There was
something religious about the scene. Rites of some true form of worship
might fitly be celebrated here. All appeared more majestic and more
sacred than in the strained, bickering moments before she showed him the
lantern. Now she perceived that it was the silver circle of trees which
was the real temple, and that the marble belvedere was but a human
offering laid before the shrine. It was in there, along the ebony paths
which ran among the glistening thickets, that one would find the
presence of the divinity.

"Oh, Richard! It will never be so beautiful as this on any other night!
Let us stay!"

"No. It will be just as good any moonlit night. I swear I'll bring you.
But now I want to get back home."

He slipped her arm through his to make her come. She stumbled along,
turning her face aside towards those mystic woods. At the end of those
paths was another clearing, wide but smaller than this, and girdled all
sides by the forest; and there was something there.... Another temple? A
statue? An event? She did not know. But if they found it, they would be
happy for ever....

"Richard--"

"No."

He swung her over the tangled wires, and they hurried through the
ploughed field. When they came to the gate at the top of the elm-row
they saw below them, on the path up from the marshes to the orchard
gate, the bobbing lantern.

"She's going fairly quickly," he said softly, speculatively. "I wonder
if she's been to his tomb? Do you think she's had time?"

"I don't know," Ellen murmured, disquieted that he should ask her when
he must be aware she could not tell.

"Oh, well!" he exclaimed, with a sudden change to loudness and
bluffness, switching on the electric torch and turning it on the earth
at their feet. "We'll find out when we get home. Let's hurry back."

They ran across the hillside, Ellen following desperately, with a dread
that if she tripped and delayed him he might not be able to behave quite
nicely, the circle of light he cast on the gr