The air was laden with perfume—­the wonderful indescribable essences of spring.  Away in the distance, faintly heard, arose the bleating of lambs.  Near at hand, throned among the purple flowers above their heads, a thrush was pouring out the rapture that thrilled his tiny life.  The whole world pulsed to the one great melody—­the universal, wordless song.  Only the man and the woman were silent as intruders in a sacred place.

Anne moved at last.  She looked up very steadily, and spoke.  “It seems like holy ground,” she said.

Her voice was hushed, yet it had in it a note of pleading.  Her eyes besought him.

And in answer Nap leaned down with a sudden, tigerish movement and laid his hand on hers.  “What have I to do with holiness?” he said.  “Anne, come down from that high pedestal of yours!  I’m tired of worshipping a goddess.  I want a woman—­a woman!  I shall worship you none the less because I hold you in my arms.”

It was done.  The spell was broken.  Those quick, passionate words had swept away her last hope of escape.  She was forced to meet him face to face, to meet him and to do battle.

For a long second she sat quite still, almost as if stunned.  Then sharply she turned her face aside, as one turns from the unbearable heat and radiance when the door of a blast-furnace is suddenly opened.

“Oh, Nap,” she said, and there was a sound of heart-break in her words, “What a pity!  What a pity!”

“Why?” he demanded fiercely.  “I have the right to speak—­to claim my own.  Are you going to deny it—­you who always speak the truth?”

“You have no right,” she answered, still with her face averted.  “No man has ever the faintest right to say to another man’s wife what you have just said to me.”

“And you think I will give you up,” he said, “for that?”

She did not at once reply.  Only after a moment she freed her hands from his hold, and the action seemed to give her strength.  She spoke, her voice very clear and resolute.  “I am not going to say anything unkind to you.  You have already borne too much for my sake.  But—­you must know that this is the end of everything.  It is the dividing of the ways—­where we must say good-bye.”

“Is it?” he said.  He looked down at her with his brief, thin-lipped smile.  “Then—­if that’s so—­look at me—­look at me, Anne, and tell me that you don’t love me!”

She made an almost convulsive gesture of protest and sat silent.

For a little he waited.  Then, “That being so,” he said very deliberately, “there is no power on earth—­I swear—­I swear—­that shall ultimately come between us!”

“Oh, hush!” she said.  “Hush!” She turned towards him, her face white and agitated.  “I will not listen to you, Nap.  I cannot listen to you!  You must go.”

She stretched a hand towards him appealingly, and he caught it, crushing it against his breast.  For a moment he seemed about to kneel, and then he altered his purpose and drew her to her feet.  Again she was aware of that subtle, mysterious force within him, battling with her, seeking to dominate, to conquer, to overwhelm her.  Again there came to her that sense of depth, depth unutterable, appalling.  She seemed to totter on the very edge of the pit of destruction.